Bruce grinned. He was going to like this guy.
Major Dubois signed the aircraft over to Bruce without blinking. A book sat in the middle of the desk. From the lurid cover, Bruce deduced that he had changed paperbacks, which confirmed that the man could read. Or that he liked to look at covers.
Bruce kept up conversation with the general on the way out to the aircraft. Once they’d reached the flight line, Bruce headed for the backseat of his F-15, while Simone threw his gear in the front.
Mooselips, Bruce’s crew chief, stepped up and accompanied the two.
“Glad you made it back from the jungle, sir.”
“You’re not half as glad as me.”
Bruce flipped through the maintenance log; nothing serious had occurred to the plane over the past two weeks while he’d been gone — with the exception of an upgrade to the avionics. They were all “fly-by-wire,” electrical in nature, so it didn’t concern him much. As long as it worked. He looked up and flipped the log to Mooselips. General Simone patted the airframe and walked around to the back.
Bruce lowered his voice. “Anything I should watch out for?”
Mooselips grinned. “Don’t forget to bring your barf bag. From what I’ve heard the general likes to run his pilots through the wringer.”
“Thanks.” Bruce turned to follow Simone as he walked around the fighter.
Bruce approached Simone with a wry grin on his face. This could turn out to be fun. He pulled out a stick of gum and popped it in his mouth.
“How’s it look, General?”
“Great. This is great.” He drew in a deep breath. “Even the JP-4 smells good, brings back memories.” He slapped the fuselage. “I’d give my left nut to be back in a wing, a line pilot again. Enjoy this while you can, son. These days are going to pass you up and you’ll never get back to them.”
“Sounds like you’re forgetting the bad times, sir. There’s a lot of rinky-dink stuff we put up with down in the trenches.”
“I tell ya, it only gets worse the higher up you get. You’d think commanding an Air Force would give me a chance to change some of that Mickey Mouse bullshit, but I’ve got my hands tied. Sometimes it feels like being in the middle of a tree full of monkeys: When you look down you see the line pilots, grinning up at you; and looking up, it’s the assholes in Washington, crapping all over you.”
They ducked under the twin tailpipes. The roar of a C-5B landing on the adjacent runway rolled over them, drowning out their conversation. The giant transport seemed to barely move; black smoke shot up from its tires as they touched the ground.
Bruce climbed in the instructor pilot position, behind and slightly above the general, where Charlie would normally sit. Tower treated them as just like any other flight, replying to their transmissions with curt answers. But Bruce bet that the “Blackman 1” call sign sure gained some attention.
General Simone and Bruce waited at the end of the runway. Radio calls mixed in with Simone’s chatter. Bruce tried to pay polite attention to the general’s patter, but he also tried to keep alert to everything happening around him. A loud whistling overhead caught his attention — a pair of F-22’s landed, one after the other.
The radio cackled. “Blackman 1, you are cleared for takeoff.”
Simone answered immediately. “Tower, Blackman. Request clearance to twenty thousand.”
“Affirmative, Blackman. There is no traffic to twenty thousand.”
“Thank you, sir.” Bruce heard the click of Simone’s mike, switching to intercom. “IP?”
“Ready, General,” answered Bruce.
It felt like Bruce had been kicked in the butt.
Simone must have jammed the throttles to full afterburners. The fighter leaped forward, continuously accelerating as it rolled down the runway. Bruce kept his eye on the airspeed indicator. In no time they were passing a hundred knots.…As their velocity increased Bruce waited for Simone to announce “rotate,” but nothing came over the intercom. They passed the rotate mark — Simone must be forcing the craft to the ground.
Bruce started to say something, but just as he opened his mouth Simone pulled back on the stick.
Once airborne, the fighter’s attitude kept going up.
“Oh, crap,” muttered Bruce. The fighter continued to accelerate, and soon they were pointed straight up — the F-15 was still accelerating, moving completely vertical. Now Bruce realized why the general had requested clearance to twenty thousand feet. At this rate, they’d be there in seconds.
“Still there, Bruce?”
“Rog, sir.” Bruce gritted his teeth. He wasn’t going to say anything until Simone was about to kill them.
Cervante surveyed the site. The one road to the clearing was well guarded, and from all indications it had not had much use. He hopped down from the truck and went around to the back of the vehicle. Seconds later Pompano followed him, walking slowly.
Cervante lifted the tarp covering the rear of the truck. Inside, a potpourri of boxes, cables, and equipment was stuffed into every corner, like a rat’s nest of high-tech gear.
Pompano limped up. Cervante threw him a look.
“What is the matter? Did you hurt yourself?”
“Getting old. These dirt roads are starting to get the best of me.”
“You have been traveling on dirt roads all your life, old man.”
“Not in a heavy truck, loaded down and hitting every bump.”
Cervante pulled the trap from the truck. A crowd of Huks congregated where the road opened up to the clearing. Cervante shouted to them. “Barguyo, run down to the start of the road and help stand guard. The rest of you, set up this equipment.”
Pompano moved around the clearing, poking his nose into where the jungle started, overturning old cans and bottles that were strewn over the area. He called to Cervante. “This place is used by kids — probably to come drink, or use drugs.”
“Americans,” confirmed Cervante. He wiped his hands and joined the older man. “This is the best location I could find this close to the runway. We should not have any problem with children — keeping a guard back down the road will deter anyone from coming here. They do not want any attention brought to them for their drugs … or sex.”
Pompano appeared to chew on his lip, then asked, “How far from the runway are we?”
“A little over two kilometers. At this range, the high-power microwave weapon should be able to disrupt their flight equipment. Not enough to pinpoint where we are, or even determine what we are doing, but enough to aggravate them greatly.”
Pompano craned his neck and looked up; there was a tiny hole in the foliage that allowed him to view the cloudy sky. “Two kilometers?” He waved an arm around. “It can do that much damage?”
Cervante strode to the truck and pulled a thick booklet from the back. He slapped it down on Pompano’s hand. “Here. The cartoons show how far this weapon can be from the target, how to set it up, and how to use it.”
Pompano leafed through the multicolored manual. He glanced at the illustrations of helmeted men setting up the device and operating it. He pointed with the booklet up at the hole in the foliage. The clouds seemed like a kaleidoscope of black-and-white swirls. “What happens if a plane flies overhead, directly above us?”
Cervante stopped. He took the operating manual from the older man and flipped through the pages. A picture of an aircraft spinning out of control, just bare meters above the ground, adorned a page.
“If the plane is low enough, it goes down.…”
Cervante stopped speaking. At that moment, a Pan Am 747 jumbo jet, probably carrying hundreds of servicemen and their children to Clark Air Base, roared not a thousand feet overhead.
Cervante jerked his head up and got a fleeting glance of the jumbo jet before it disappeared. He looked back at Pompano.