Jim DeFelice - Going Deep

“I got it,” snapped Doberman.

“You okay with this?”

“You’re sounding like my fucking mother today, A-Bomb. I don’t know which one of you assholes is worse, you or Mongoose. Why don’t you guys relax, huh?”

“Just making sure, prick-face. You ready to try your gear?”

“You gonna hold my dick for me while I pee, too?”

“I might.”

A-Bomb slipped his Hog lower, trying to get a good look beneath Doberman’s wings. The front wheel was down smooth, and so was the wheel beneath the damaged right wing.

But of all things, his left wheel was stuck.

“Uh, Doberman, you’re not going to believe this — ”

“I’m already trying to get it down manually. It must have been hit when the missile struck.”

“No, man, the left wheel. The right one looks fine.”

“You sure you know your left from your right?”

“What’s your indicator say?”

“Damn.”

Doberman hit the handle to lower the gear twice more. He couldn’t for the life of him figure what the hell the problem was. Like nearly all other aircraft flying, a hydraulic system automatically snapped the landing gear in place. But the Hog also had a safety system; because the wheels folded backwards, they could be manually released and locked into place with help from the slipstream or wind beneath the plane. And that should have happened by now.

One good thing — dropping the right wheel hadn’t snapped the wing in two. Not yet, anyway. But it hadn’t made it any easier to fly.

The runway was maybe a hundred feet away, and damned if the engine wasn’t starting to choke.

He reached for the handle and once again dropped it. Finally, he felt it move.

Or thought he did. Or hoped he did. There was no turning back now.

Mongoose felt a surge of relief as Doberman’s Hog rolled along the tarmac, smart and sharp as if she’d just been up for a quick qualifying spin. Right behind her came an HC-130 Spectre gunship, also low on fuel and just about trailing an engine.

The major gunned his engine. Looking for his place in the landing stack, he realized that he had to pee so bad he was going to have to duck under the wing once he touched down.

Assuming he could wait that long.

Technical Sergeant Rosen did a decent job with the Hog, good enough to get the radio and all of the instrumentation working. Between her and the scrub base’s own mechanics, the A-10 was patched and ready to go in what must have been world record time. In fact, for a few minutes it seemed like the base colonel was going to stick it into a four-ship element tasked to go north and bomb trucks.

Dixon felt a twinge of panic when he heard that. But he was also disappointed when the idea was dropped and he was told just to go home instead.

The fuel queue was backed up worse than the entrance ramp to the LA Freeway at rush hour. There was an HC-130 at the head of the line, and damned if the big four-engined monster didn’t look like she was going to drain the trucks dry.

Dixon tried to look disinterested as he sat in the cockpit, checking his way points and all of the marginalia critical for his return trip through King Khalid Military City and back on to King Fahd. He was nervous, and he wasn’t nervous. He could do this in his sleep; it was an easy ferry trip home through friendly skies.

As long as he didn’t come under fire. Then all bets were off.

No they weren’t, he told himself. He’d gotten spooked, sure, but that was because it was the first time and he didn’t know what to expect. The next time would be better. The next time he’d nail the son of a bitch.

He hated the fact that he had lied to Mongoose about dropping the bombs. But on the bottom line, it really didn’t matter. He’d dropped them. He’d gotten his plane back in one piece. That was what was important.

He wondered if he shouldn’t feel a little pissed off at being moved into Doberman’s plane. Yeah, he was the lowest ranking pilot, the least experienced by far, but damn! That was his plane.

And the son of a bitch had kept him from redeeming himself.

You fall off a horse, you get right back on.

He could. He knew he could.

Whether the Herc was finally topped off or had just exceeded the limit on its credit card, the gas line began to move. Dixon eased up, wondering at the succession of jets that kept straggling onto the desert strip. The end of the runway and the access ramp were crowded with planes. If Jouf was this packed, he wondered what the home dome, King Fahd, would look like. Though much further behind the lines, it housed a full list of units, not to mention every A-10 in the theater. And its long, smooth runways would make it a convenient rest stop for battle weary planes based further south or on one of the two carriers in the nearby Gulf.

“Hey Yank! Yank!”

Dixon suddenly realized that a man in a green flight suit was doing jumping jacks in front of his right wing. His mouth seemed to be moving; in any event, it was fairly obvious that he wanted to talk to him. Dixon waved the fellow around to the left side of the plane and popped down the cockpit ladder. He soon found a British pilot leaning over the side into his seat. Damned if, through the myriad of fuel and oil smells, the stink of exhaust, sweat, gunpowder and metal, he didn’t catch a strong whiff of Scotch off the man.

The Brit gestured for Dixon to take off his helmet so he could hear better. Reluctantly, Dixon did so. It didn’t help him hear any better, and now he was sure it was Scotch.

“I want to thank you for helping rescue me,” said the visitor.

“When?”

“Just now. Up near Mudaysis.”

“Wasn’t me.”

“What?”

“Wasn’t me,” shouted Dixon. He tried to explain that the Hog had been grounded for the entire afternoon, and had only just been repaired. The Brit nodded at about half of what he said.

“Some of your mates, then,” said the other pilot. “They were definitely A-lOs.”

“There’s a bunch of us.”

“Bloody good crew. They risked their lives. All kinds of radar operating there.”

“Radar?”

The man nodded. “Got us coming in and out. My commander got a clear signal.”

“Commander?”

“Lost we think.” The pilot’s eyes edged downwards ever so slightly, then rose again, as if he had been watching a rowboat on a gently ebbing river. “Thank your friends.”

“I will.”

Dixon waited for the man to jump down and run off before obeying the ground crew’s wild gestures to come the hell forward and take fuel. Cinching up to get ready for takeoff, he wondered if he had heard what the man said correctly.

The GCI site they were supposed to take out that morning was just south of Mudaysis.

His fuckup had cost someone his life.

When Michael Knowlington was young, the sky was a romantic place, full of possibilities and speed. Then it became a place for defying death; the rush-in-your-face seat-jolt he got nearly every time he went up was like an addict’s fix. For a brief time it was an extension of his mind and body, reaching out into the future and the past in the same motion. Then it became an ugly place, a place that told him how old he was, how useless.

Now it was just the sky, empty and gray. Colonel Knowlington stared at it, alone at the edge of the runway, the only place he had to himself on the massive base.

The truth was, Knowlington had expected to lose at least one pilot, and probably more. They’d all survived, and the preliminary reports on their missions were glowing. Now, the last Hog straggled in. It was Dixon in the A-10A patched together at Al Jouf. He felt himself overcome by emotion. He walked a few feet further along the runway, making damn sure no one else was around.