Jim DeFelice - Going Deep

Every time he asked how they got here, the two pilots began replaying what sounded like a seriously awesome, close-in fur ball gun battle. Their desert-brown ships bore no evidence of a gunfight, however, and Dixon got a firm “no” whenever he used the word “damage.”

Eventually, the lieutenant decided he had as much information as he was ever going to get. He thanked the men, who now began to pepper him with questions about how in God’s name they could get home from here. Dixon nodded cheerfully, answered “yes” as much as possible, then turned and ran for Bauer.

At last he was getting the hang of this intelligence stuff.

The major reinterpreted the pilots’ pigeon English and added a few notes to a thick stack of papers on the Humvee seat. Looking up, Bauer pointed to an F-14 that had swung its wings out wide to land and announced that it belonged to the Saratoga, a carrier in the Red Sea; it had been part of a Navy package striking deep into west Iraq and lost its INS, among other things.

“You want me to go debrief him?” Dixon asked.

“Nah. I’ll get that one myself. Got a cousin on the ship I want to say hi to. Listen, the parts you were waiting for landed about ten minutes ago. Ought to be at the repair area by now. Why don’t you go make sure they get to the right place? Thanks for helping. If you’re ever looking for a job in intelligence, come see me.”

The Hog had been moved several times in the past few hours, and was at the far end of the maintenance areas. A tubular steel ladder had been erected around part of the wing and fuselage, and a small figure was atop it, busily tossing pieces of the plane to the ground. As Dixon got closer, he realized a succession of curses was accompanying the work. He also realized something else; the tech sergeant working on the plane was a woman.

Though he recognized her from his unit, Dixon didn’t know Becky Rosen; in fact, he didn’t know most of the maintenance people besides his own crew chief and one or two of the men who habitually worked on his plane. He’d heard a few things about her though, none of them pleasant. Short, built like a mud wrestler, she had cat eyes and round, freckled cheeks.

She turned around and saw him staring at her from the ground. “Dixon, right? What the hell did you do to this Hog? Drive it through a wheat thresher?”

“I didn’t do anything to it,” he said, taken by surprise. “Captain Glenon was flying.”

“Doberman, huh? I thought he knew better than this. Fuck, did he think we were bored or something?”

“Maybe,” said the lieutenant, not really knowing what else to say.

She scowled. “What the hell happened to yours?”

“My plane? Nothing.”

“Well where is it? Did you walk back from Iraq?”

Dixon felt his entire body begin to burn. His temporary assignment as non-intelligence officer had taken his mind off his failure, but now the guilt shot back in a heavy dose.

But damn it; when did a tech sergeant earn the right to grill an officer?

“Major Johnson bumped me,” he said stiffly.

“Oh.” She looked at him a moment, then turned back to the plane.

There was something in the look that pissed him off even more than her tart tone.

Pity?

He didn’t need that from a stinking technician.

“Say Lieutenant, you think you could hand me up that TACAN aerial cover?”

“What?”

“The big flat doohicky thing by your feet. The radio antenna? The fin?”

“I know what it is.” Dixon was so flustered with anger he couldn’t say anything else. He reached over and picked up the thick blade. Rosen had returned to work on the Hog, and so he had to climb up onto the wing to hand it to her.

“Thanks. Looks like the IFF is fine, but these wires here are toast. You all right, Lieutenant?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Get shot at?”

“I guess so.”

He tried to make his voice sound hard, but Rosen laughed as if he were joking. “Hand me the screwdriver out of the bag over there, okay?”

“What, you think I’m your gofer?”

“No, sir, Lieutenant,” she snapped. “But I was under the impression that you wanted to get this airplane back in the air as soon as possible, and helping me out a little will expedite matters.”

“Expedite. Where’d you learn that word?”

“I have a masters degree in English lit,” she said, holding out her hand for the tool.

Dixon couldn’t tell if she was serious. He reached into the large bag Rosen used as a tool carrier and handed her the screwdriver. He noticed that the bag, though covered with grease and dirt, was made of leather.

“My dad gave it to me. Sentimental value,” she said.

“The degree?”

“No, the bag, wise guy. I earned the degree myself. Romance poetry.” She took the tool and went back to work connecting the fin. Dixon couldn’t see what she was doing beneath the access cover and fin, but there were loose parts everywhere. “What was it like?”

“What?”

“Jesus! Bombing Saddam,” she said. “Did you hit your target?”

“I guess.”

“You guess?” Rosen turned so quickly her face almost smacked his. “No offense, Lieutenant, but we’re busting our butts back here for you guys, and a straight answer wouldn’t hurt now and then.”

Dixon stepped back. “What’s up your ass?”

Rosen turned around to him. “Lieutenant?”

“Why are you riding me?”

“I’m not.” Her eyes were all innocence. “I’m not. Come on, help me get these wires in here. Don’t mind the sheet metal. I had to bend things a little. We’ll straighten that out later. Not by the book, but you want to fly before tonight, right?”

She didn’t mean anything, Dixon thought to himself. She’s just blunt.

“Watch your hands. That end’s sharp. Twenty-seven millimeter went right through here, see? Doberman was flying?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s one lucky son of a bitch, I’ll tell you that. She slapped the side of the plane like she was smacking a favorite horse. “Of course, a Hog can take a lot of shit. But what I’d like to know is how he managed to take triple-A on the top of the plane. I can understand the holes in the belly and the back, but this?”

“Probably he had the Hog on its side, rolling out of the attack,” said Dixon. He motioned with his hands. “The shells would have gotten him like this. There was a lot of triple-A.”

“I thought you guys were supposed to stay above the flak.”

“We were. But the cloud cover was kind of high. Have to see where we’re bombing. And you know… ”

“Anything over five hundred feet you want oxygen, right? That Hog macho anti-snob snobbery shit.” She slammed an access panel closed, then scooped up her tools and slid down the ladder to the ground, half-running to work on another part of the jet. Dixon, still unsure what the hell to make of her, followed tentatively.

“By three. Four the latest,” she said.

“Huh?”

“It’s going to take me a little while to finish. I want to make sure it will work the whole way home. The rest of this we can tidy up back at the aerodrome. The crew here did a kick ass job. Looks like they stamped you out a new rear end. Honest. You’ll be taking off for King Fahd in no time.”

“Great.”

“You sound disappointed. You looking to go back north?”

“Yeah,” he said, his anger stoking up again.

“You’re not scared?”

Scared?

She wasn’t busting his chops. It was a real question.

“Yeah,” admitted Dixon. “I was petrified.”

Her eyes softened. They were pretty eyes, actually, when they looked at you like this.

“Takes balls to admit it,” she said, snapping her game face back on. “Don’t worry, you’ll get another shot. Say listen, Lieutenant, you think you can go steal a really big hammer off that crew over there? A really big one. I have to do some serious banging if we’re going to get you back to Fahd in time for dinner. And don’t tell them what it’s for. Somebody comes over here with a manual and we’re going to bed without supper for three weeks.”