Bruce spotted his aircraft’s tail number. In the distance, palm trees just off the runway added to the feeling of stifling humidity. He and Charlie approached the fighter, each quiet, each going over what was needed to prepare for the flight.
An older man approached them, dressed in battle fatigue pants and a v-neck T-shirt. Sweat spotted most of the man’s T-shirt, especially around the armpits; he looked to be in his early forties, nearly twice as old as Bruce. The man held out a hand. He nodded to Charlie but spoke to Bruce.
“Lieutenant Steele? I’m Tech Sergeant Noresteader, your crew chief. Welcome to Clark.”
Bruce stopped, dropping his flight bag. “Glad to know you. Call me ‘Assassin’ when the brass isn’t around.”
The man cracked a grin as they shook hands. “My friends call me ‘Mooselips’”
“Okay, Mooselips. Captain Fargassa goes by ‘Foggy’”
“That’s some call sign, Captain.”
“It’s not for the name, it’s—”
Bruce interrupted Charlie’s explanation. “We call him Foggy because no one can understand what the hell he’s talking about.” Bruce tapped his head with a finger. “Professor type. We’d call him ‘Prof,’ but call signs have to be at least two syllables.”
“I think I’m going to enjoy working with you, Captain.”
“Foggy,” corrected Charlie.
“You got the 781?” interrupted Bruce.
“Yeah.” Mooselips wiped a sweaty hand on his fatigues and handed Bruce the maintenance log for the fighter.
Bruce took the notebook and nodded to the waiting craft. “All right. Let’s rock and roll. We’ve got seventeen minutes.”
Charlie picked up his flight bag and headed for the fighter. Once up the stairs, he placed his gear into the cockpit and climbed in. After stowing his flight bag, he began to go over the instruments.
Bruce turned his attention to the maintenance log. He flipped through the pages. “Trouble, or anything I need to be aware of?”
“No, sir.” Mooselips hesitated at Bruce’s raised eyebrows. “Sorry, Assassin.” Bruce went back to reading the log. “I mean, no. There was some preventive maintenance done on the avionics, and engine two leaked some oil during the pressure check, but I’ve been on top of things.”
“Great.” Bruce shut the book and picked up his flight bag. Mooselips took off for the auxiliary power unit while Bruce stowed his gear. Switches checked, he made his way back down the ladder and around the craft, tugging on an aileron, checking fluid levels for himself, before he finally settled into the cockpit for good.
Mooselips hovered over him, clucking like a mother hen, as the enlisted man strapped him in. “That ought to do you, Assassin. Have fun up there for me.”
Bruce pulled on his helmet. “That’s a rog. Catch you in two hours.”
Mooselips scrambled down the ladder. Bruce flexed his gloved hands and pulled back a Nomex sleeve, exposing his watch. One minute to check in. He clicked on intercom and went “hot-mike.”
“How’s it going, Foggy?”
“GPS up. All screens go.”
Bruce clicked his mike twice, informing Charlie that he understood. He quickly surveyed the instruments. All lights glowed a soft green, visible even in the direct sunlight. Directly in front of him, at eye level, rose a Plexiglas screen — the heads-up display, or HUD. Once on, the HUD would display critical flight and targeting information directly in front of his field of view, allowing Bruce to keep his head up.
“Okay, Foggy.” This time Charlie clicked his mike twice.
Bruce listened over the radio, waiting, popping his gum. He glanced at his watch. Ten seconds.
Just as the seconds clicked to zero, Skipper’s voice came over the radio.
“Maddog check.”
“Two.”
“Three.” Catman.
Bruce said, “Four.”
“Button one.”
Bruce switched to the pre-assigned squadron frequency. The rest of the flight was already checking in.
“Check two.”
“Three.”
“Four.”
“Start ’em up.”
On Skipper’s command, Bruce pointed out of the cockpit at Mooselips. Now wearing a set of headphones to muffle the sound, Mooselips punched the auxiliary power unit; black smoke rolled from the unit.
When Mooselips pointed back at him, Bruce kicked on the right engine. A growing white noise rolled in from the back of the craft. Bruce worked overtime on his gum.
Once both engines caught, Bruce checked over the instruments. Oil pressure, fuel, hydraulics, idle RPM — everything looked good.
When Skipper’s command came to pull out, Bruce nodded at Mooselips and gave him a thumbs-up. With their canopies still up, the flight of four F-15Es — eight young officers strapped to their howling metal machines — crept down the taxiway.
And as much as he despised military bullshit, Bruce felt a thrill as Mooselips popped to attention and threw him a salute.
The flight times were all classified.
No more than twenty people in the world knew about their quantum key encryption, the destination, fight plan, or even time of day that the Lockheed SR-73 “Blackbird III” flew its mission. Even the pilots were kept in the dark, notified at the last possible minute so that they could work out their flight plans, coordinate their refueling, and keep their destination secret. The spy plane was a manned version of the SR-72, the unmanned hypersonic follow-on to the SR-71; its very existence was a closely guarded secret.
Which was why no one could figure out how Taco Charlie, a local Japanese restaurant owner, had succeeded in setting up a portable taco stand at the end of the runway, just outside of the Kadena Air Force Base fence, a half hour before the flight was due to take off. The stand was stocked with food for tourists, complete with a crudely lettered sign in English:
AMERICAN SPY PLANE NEXT HABU FLIGHT: 7:25 AM
It drove the Air Force Office of Special Investigation batty, but there seemed to be no harm done, and it was the standard joke that Taco Charlie was better informed than half of the intelligence services.
What went unnoticed was the presence of Taco Charlie’s nine-year-old great-grandson, Oniksuki. The young boy woke hours before dawn every day to pedal furiously onto the sprawling American base. Once on base, he took off for the military air terminal. There, Oniksuki waited for the morning flight from Japan. Thousands of newspapers — the Pacific Stars and Stripes—were delivered from Japan as the “official” newspaper of the American forces.
Haggling with the local deliverers, Oniksuki could make off with five to ten papers from each person, soon resulting in a cache of fifty to a hundred of the papers. A ten-minute bike ride up a sloping hill put the overburdened boy at the Kadena Officers’ Club, where he would sit and wait in the dark to sell his papers to the American officers.
Despite all the secrecy, the one unchanging requirement that the American doctors forced upon the SR-73 pilots was a high-protein, low-fat meal immediately before a flight. Quite often the arduous missions dictated that the crew overfly “targets” thousands of miles away; the steak-and-egg meals so popular with the astronauts were ideal for the SR-73 pilots, and the Kadena Officers’ Club was the perfect place to prepare the meal. Thus, anyone trying to watch the official in-flight kitchen would immediately be suspicious if they saw an order for steak and eggs come in.
Meanwhile, Oniksuki patiently sold his papers all day long, no one questioning his presence. He knew the SR-73 pilots by sight. For when the pilots turned left instead of right upon entering the Officers’ Club, and headed for the private dining room, then it was time for Oniksuki to put his papers down and pedal to his great-grandfather’s — the Habu was about to take off.