He tried everything to shake it loose. Jiggling the plane, going into negative Gs, a barrel roll. It stayed right where it was.
The wing commander got involved, telling him to ditch the plane, but Barr thought it was a pretty good airplane. He was offered one of the Army’s runways in the Canal Zone, but thought about having that bomb come loose and hit something populated. He took it into the short field which was at least isolated in the jungle.
With gear, flaps, wing slats, and arresting hook down, he floated that Phantom in toward the three sets of arresting cables. It felt feather-light to him, floating, floating. He missed the first cable, caught the second, came to an abrupt and jarring halt, and slammed the airplane on the ground. He scrambled out of the cockpit, slid to the ground, and ran about a half-mile away.
The bomb was still hanging on the pylon, but the Bomb Disposal Unit had only to lift the nose six inches to have the rear hanger release.
It felt the same way this time.
Barr floated the F-4 toward the darkening runway, felt the main gear touch down, then chopped the throttles.
Punched out the drag chute.
The chuckholes on the right side — black irregular ebony voids — whisked by in his peripheral vision.
Nose gear down.
There was sand and dirt and clods on the runway. The wheels kicked it up, and he heard the clunks against the skin of the fuselage and wings.
Easing in the brakes.
Halfway down the strip?
Started slewing the nose to the right.
The right brake pedal went soft.
A black spot leapt out at him.
Thunked into it.
The airplane tried to leap to the left.
Rocked sideways.
Keep the right wing up.
Easy now.
What the hell?
Blown left tire.
Again moving to the right.
The left gear back down on the ground.
Screeching.
Tearing up the wheel rim.
Fighting the pull to the left.
Slowing.
The aircraft bucked and fought his control, then finally slid to a stop.
“Yucca Two?” asked Wyatt from the sky above.
“Blown tire,” Barr radioed back as he opened the canopy. “Hold everyone off until I see if I can get it off the runway.”
“Roger, Two.”
“Yucca Four, Two,” Barr radioed.
“Four,” Gettman replied.
“You want to get out of your bird and run over and drop a flare in that first pothole?”
“Roger, Two. I’ll see what I can do.”
Jockeying the throttles, Barr spun the plane to the left, dragging on the wheel rim. He figured all of the rubber of the tire had shredded off. He used three-quarter throttle on the left turbojet, and the Phantom edged its way forward, then off the runway. The wheel dug a deep rut in the earth and bogged down. The tail of the F-4 was still protruding over ten feet of the runway.
He killed the engines.
“Yucca One, Two.”
“Go, Two.”
“Let’s get Wizard down next. I need a tractor and a spare tire. And Wizard, please be advised my ass-end is still on the runway.”
He turned on his navigation lights to give Demion a clear indicator of where the F-4 was located.
Just to be certain, Barr released himself from his couplings, jammed the safety pin in the ejection seat, and slipped over the coaming of the cockpit. He lowered himself down the fuselage side until he was hanging by his fingers, then released his hold. He hit the ground hard enough to sting his ankle.
He hobbled a couple hundred feet away to watch the Herc come in.
Gettman’s flare, in the bottom of the chuckhole, provided the warning Demion needed without blinding him. The big transport glided in, burned a little rubber, then veered toward the right side of the strip. When he had slowed enough, he turned left and came toward Barr, rumbling past the wounded Phantom and off the runway.
Minutes later, Win Potter drove the tractor down the ramp, hooked a tow bar to the nose gear of the F-4, and dragged it twenty feet from the strip.
Wyatt began landing the rest of the planes.
It was almost nine o’clock before they had the wheel and tire changed and the fighters and C-130s lined up near the wreckage of the two old hangars.
Wyatt forbid the use of any major lights, not wanting to attract the attention of any possible airborne border patrol. Pilots and technicians used penlights to perform their post-flight checks. They made certain that bombs and missiles had not been damaged by rock debris on the runway.
From the two drums of water they had brought along, Formsby passed out rations in small cardboard pails. That was for bathing, getting the sweat and dirt out of the pores. Hank Cavanaugh issued MREs, but few of them were very interested in eating.
It was too hot.
It stayed that way long after the sun went down and a billion brilliant stars came out. Wyatt allowed a single red light to be illuminated in the cargo bay of the Hercules, where everyone gathered, some to try and sleep. A chess game got underway, as did a four-handed game of poker.
Barr and Formsby walked up the ramp, passed through the cargo bay, and joined Wyatt in the crew compartment. A dim glow of cerise light spilled through the hatchway.
Since the bunks had been removed, they sat on the floor, leaning against the bulkheads.
“You handled that landing well, Bucky,” Wyatt said.
Barr shrugged. “Part of the territory we walk.”
“I admit to being somewhat concerned about the ordnance load you were carrying,” Formsby said.
“I thought about it some myself,” Barr said.
He really hadn’t considered it deeply, though. The reflexes and the instinct assumed command in times of crisis, and the mind kind of followed along. His responses with the stick, rudder, throttles, and brakes had been automatic; he hadn’t thought about what action to take at all.
“Did you guys have time to think about what Church wants us to do?” Wyatt asked. “About catching Ramad’s aircraft on the ground on the morning of the second?”
“I did think about it,” Formsby said. “Being an air controller with nothing to control allows a certain flexibility of time. I think he’s right.”
“Ditto,” Barr said. “If we go up against those blast doors with five-hundred-pounders, we’re only going to leave dents behind.”
“All right, then. That means we sit here through the day tomorrow and hope no stray Mirage spots us.”
“With no appreciable amount of time over target, however,” Barr said, “it would be helpful to know Ramad’s thoughts on a take-off time.”
“Dawn is likely,” Formsby said. “I don’t think many Libyan pilots like to fly at night.”
“If all we had to do was intercept the flight, we could hide out over the Sudan and pounce on them,” Wyatt said. “But half our mission is delivering HE against the chem plant. We’re a little short of aircraft and ordnance type for what we’re facing.”
“Do you want to change the roles for the C and D models, Andy?” Barr asked. “We could load bombs on the centre-line and move their missiles to the E models.”
“It’s a thought, Bucky. Let’s keep it on the desk for the time being.”
“The crucial point,” Formsby said, “is still Ramad’s take-off time. Do you suppose your spies have determined anything more?”
“Not my spies. But we can call ’em and find out,” Barr said. “With all of the risks currently involved, I think we can add the risk of a short radio call. I should think they’ve got their satellites still in position unless they’ve given up on us.”
“They received my transmission a couple days ago without apparent trouble,” Formsby said.