Of course, he had assumed the tanker was going to be on time.
He tried another channel as he swore into his mask. In the front cockpit, Ammon stared out the side of his canopy and watched the cold sea down below.
The KC-10 pilot nodded to the copilot, who then switched the radio frequency over.
“I hope they’re up on this freq,” the copilot said. “With all that weather going on back to our east, we really can’t afford any delays.”
“Yeah,” the pilot agreed. “I’d really like to get this thing going, then head on back home.” The flight engineer in the aft seat nodded his head. They were all anxious to start heading back toward Spain. No one liked these mid-Atlantic air refuelings. Especially at night. Especially with bad weather at home base.
The copilot dialed up the frequency. Almost immediately, an anxious voice filled his headset.
“Wolf five-three, Wolf five-three, this is Heater four-one. Wolf five-three, do you read?”
“Heater four-one, this is Wolf five-three,” a man’s deep voice boomed through Morozov’s headset. “We got you loud and clear. You’re a little early tonight, aren’t you?”
Morozov breathed a short grunt into his mask. Wiping his flight glove across his upper lip, he spoke into his microphone once more.
“Oh, yeah, that’s a roger. It looks like we are going to be about twenty minutes early. Big tail wind crossing the pond from the jet stream. And we’re running a little bit low on gas. Any chance you could meet us at the rendezvous point a little early?”
“Stand by, Heater,” the tanker replied. Then after a short pause, the voice crackled back.
“That’s a negative, Heater four-one. In fact, we’ll be lucky if we get there on time. We got socked in back at Torrejon. Thunderstorms everywhere. Best we can do would be a rendezvous time of twenty-one eleven. How will that work for you?”
Morozov glanced at his watch. That was still twelve minutes away!
“How much fuel we got?” he called out tersely to Ammon.
“Forty-one,” Ammon replied.
Morozov did the math in his head. Forty-one hundred pounds… about eighteen minutes of fuel. It would take them twelve minutes to the rendezvous. Couple minutes to hook up with the tanker. That was fourteen, maybe fifteen minutes total.
They would only be running on fumes!
He never intended to cut it so close.
“No, Wolf,” Morozov finally replied. “That’s still too late. We are almost running dry here. Starting to suck on our cushions, if you know what I mean. So just tell me, what is the soonest you can be at the point?”
Inside the tanker, the pilot glanced over at the copilot who did some quick math on a portable air-data computer. After several seconds, the copilot lifted the small display up to the pilot so that he could read the numbers, while shrugging his shoulders.
The tanker pilot keyed his microphone switch.
“Sorry, Heater. That is about as early as we’re going to make it.”
A short pause.
“Heater, how much fuel do you have?” the tanker pilot asked.
“Twenty thousand pounds,” Morozov lied.
“Uh… that’s not much now, Heater.” Inside the B-1, Ammon almost laughed as he wished it were true.
“Okay, Heater,” the tanker pilot continued, “you still have the option of turning back to the Azores, just like the emergency air refueling plan says.”
The tanker pilot was right. No aircraft was ever sent across the Atlantic without always being in a position to make some kind of emergency landing, just in case their air refueling tankers couldn’t meet them to pass off fuel. But he didn’t want to give the impression that he knew more about their situation than the B-1 pilot did. So he was careful about what he said. And, as always, the ultimate decision was left up to the bomber crew.
The tanker pilot listened for a moment, then said, “Did you copy, Heater four-one? Do you need to turn back to the Azores for an emergency landing? If twenty-one eleven will not work for you, maybe that’s what you should do. I’m sorry, that’s the earliest that we’re going to be there.”
Morozov swallowed hard and stared at his watch, then said, “No. No, Wolf. Plan on meeting us then. Twenty-one eleven will work out.”
Ammon could hardly believe it. How close was it going to be?!
Ammon glanced at his fuel gauge once again. Under 4,000 pounds. He slowly shook his head as he figured how quickly they would burn 4,000 pounds of fuel.
It was going to be tight. Very tight. There was no room for error. Not the slightest edge for mistakes. If his fuel gauge wasn’t exactly right, if the tankers were even a little bit slow, or if they had any trouble finding or linking up with the tankers, then it was over. And they were taking a swim.
As Ammon looked out ahead for the tanker, he heard Morozov talk to the tanker once again.
“Wolf five-three, Heater four-one.”
“Go ahead, Heater.”
“Yeah, ahh… we are receiving some static on this frequency. Might be some bleed over from one of the carrier groups off of Lisbon. Any chance we could change over to another frequency? How about two-forty-seven point nine five?”
“Sure, no problem, Wolf. We are switching over now.”
The radio had seemed very clear to Ammon. He hadn’t noticed any static at all.
Twelve hundred miles to the east, at the Torrejon Air Base, the command post was going crazy. On the far wall, illuminated red lights strobed the semi-darkness, and a buzzer sounded gently overhead. Telephones were ringing from all over the world. Printers clacked and spit out long rolls of white paper. The senior controller and communications officer were eyeing each other across the padded floor.
“What do you mean, you can’t get them up on the radios?” the communications officer shouted.
“The storms have created some interference on the High Frequency,” the senior controller responded. “We’ve been trying for the past two hours, almost since the tanker took off, but we haven’t been able to raise them.”
“Sonofa…,” the communications officer muttered. He thumped on the table and stared up at the map, thinking, then turning to his controller, he said, “Okay, forget the HF. Try getting ahold of Atlantic Radio. They track all of the transatlantic aircraft. They should be able to get through to the tanker.
“I want you to do whatever it takes. Call them on the land-line. Use the satellite communications if you have to. But get through to Global Atlantic and tell them to turn that tanker around!”
The controller nodded and turned back to his console. Picking up one of the phones that hung near his rolling chair, he too began to yell at whoever was on the other end.
The communications officer shook his head, turned back to his desk, and read the message once again. It was very short and to the point.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
TO: Butter 46
FR: Chief of Staff, USAF
RE: “SHATTERED BONE”
Message follows.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
1- Reason to believe your Tanker Task Force has been unlawfully tasked to refuel Atlantic crossing B-1.
2- DO NOT… repeat… DO NOT allow your tanker to refuel B-1. Abort refueling by any means.
3- Acknowledge receipt of message with follow-on actions.
4- Message complete
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
The communications officer leaned back in his seat and sucked on his tongue. “SHATTERED BONE”? Code Alpha messages from the Air Force Chief of Staff? Unlawfully tasked tanker orders? What was going on?