Brendan DuBois - Final Winter

Brian looked like he was going to say something when a nearby phone rang, and the guy picking it up gave a little whoop of joy.

‘AirBox 15 is on the ground, safe and sound!’

Monty looked up at the display screen. Two icons remained.

He turned to Brian. ‘See? Day’s getting better already.’

Captain Tuthill said, ‘How much longer, boomer?’

‘Another five, six minutes, sir.’

‘Very good.’

He turned in his seat, said to his co-pilot, ‘Travis, minute we’re done dumping fuel, tell ATC we’ll want a rendezvous heading to that last AirBox flight immediately. Got it?’

‘Roger that, sir.’

‘All right.’

The navigator said, ‘Bet your dad will have a story to tell you when this is through.’

Tuthill said, ‘More than one story, I’m sure.’

Good point, he thought. Dad loved to tell stories about all the places he had been, all the aircraft he had repaired, all the pilots whose butts he had saved. God, the hours he had spent in the backyard, those damn tiki torches burning, Dad talking about—

His boomer’s voice, shouting, ‘Captain! Pull up, pull up, pull up!’

So close, Hugh thought, so close, just a few more minutes, and Stacy Moore confirmed it, saying, ‘Hugh, we’re going to make it, just a few minutes more, and we’ve got enough fuel to—’

The KC-135 was there, right in front of him, a huge construct of steel and fabrication and the fuel was dumping out and—

Oh, damn, oh damn—

Hugh’s chest felt like it was exploding, like it was swelling up and he fell forward, choking, and the last thing he heard was his co-pilot, screaming…

An amateur filmmaker from Hobson, Kentucky, caught it on tape, the moment when the AirBox flight sped up and descended, its nose colliding with the tail of the KC-135, the AirBox shuddering and breaking up in flight, the KC-135 catching fire, turning over, and then exploding in mid-air, fuel burning, debris raining down, falling to earth, yet—

Yet not that day, nor ever, did a single spore of anthrax from that aircraft make it to the ground.

General Bocks saw the display screen, heard the reports, sat down. For a moment it seemed as though the phones had stopped ringing, the voices had stopped talking, the keyboards had stopped clacking. All that he saw in his world was the blinking icon of that one single aircraft up there that belonged to him, yet which had been stolen such a very long time ago.

‘One-oh-seven, am I right?’ he asked no one in particular.

‘Yes, sir. One-oh-seven, airborne over southeastern Pennsylvania.’

‘Fuel status?’

‘About twenty minutes.’

He looked at the faces, saw that the night manager, Pam Kasnet, was still there. ‘Pam?’

‘Yes?’

‘Get a phone patch set up. I need to talk to one-oh-seven.’

Carrie Floyd’s eyes hurt from the strain, looking and looking out there for that damn KC-135, but the sky was blank. She checked the fuel gauge and the time on her watch. About twenty minutes of flying left, if they were lucky, and luck would mean having that damn Stratotanker pop over the horizon and shag ass to their position. Because if that particular Air Force aircraft didn’t show up, she was sure that the two Air Force fighters still shadowing them would take care of business.

Sean whispered something and said aloud, ‘Carrie, the General’s on comm two.’

She felt everything just fade away. Sean’s face looked ashen. ‘Not good news, is it?’

‘Seeing a Stratotanker out there would be good news,’ she said. ‘Hearing from the General is not good news. All right, let’s hear what he has to say.’

And in the space of those few seconds when she made the comm switch so that she could hear the General’s voice, she also hoped against hope that her worst fears weren’t about to come true. She said a quick prayer, too quick to reach God, she thought, for the General came on and said what had to be said.

‘Carrie… Sean… I’m sorry to say we’re unable to get a KC-135 to your position.’

A feeling came to Carrie, that horrible empty feeling she had felt once before, back on the Enterprise, when the Viking S-3 that she had been piloting had fallen off the end of the flight deck, knowing that she was seconds away from her and her co-pilot’s death.

‘What happened?’ she finally asked. ‘I thought we had one in-bound from Kentucky, after it had met up with AirBox 22.’

Bocks said, ‘Mid-air collision. I’m sorry, we lost both aircraft. There are no other refueling aircraft available in the area.’

Sean whispered something again. For the briefest of moments, she closed her eyes. So close. Her own idea… and so close.

She triggered the microphone, and the voice that came out wasn’t her own, it wasn’t someone panicking over what was about to happen, no, it was her old Navy voice, old Smash, come to life. The voice said, ‘We understand. Thanks for trying. General, you need to make it right for our families. Understood?’

Bocks said, ‘Of course. Is there… is there anybody you’d like to talk to… Carrie? Sean?’

She looked to Sean. He shook his head. Carrie thought about her Susan… Susan, safe and secure in school. To talk to her, at this last moment? To have her hauled out of class and taken to the principal’s office, to have a phone shoved at her and be told that… well, mommy wants to say goodbye?

‘No,’ she said. ‘No. There’s nobody we want to talk to. But I have a request, General. And you better make it happen.’

‘All right,’ Bocks said. ‘I’ll make it happen.’

She made her request, and when Bocks signed off she said to Sean, remembering her service aboard the Enterprise, ‘Sorry, my dear. I have a rotten record of taking care of my co-pilots.’

‘Maybe I’ll complain to the union, when I get a chance.’

‘Yeah,’ Carrie said, looking out to the empty sky, no last-minute reprieve out there. ‘When you get the chance.’

Grayson Carter worked in one of the maintenance shops for AirBox, and he was trying to catch up on some paperwork when the door to the offices blasted open and General Bocks and Randy Tuthill were there, staring at him.

‘Sir… what can I—’

Bocks said, ‘Grayson. You’re a minister, aren’t you? At a church in the city?’

‘Yes — yes, I am. Fourth Street Baptist. I minister there on weekends and—’

His upper left arm was grabbed hard by the General. ‘Grayson, we need you to come with us, right now. We need you, and we need you bad.’

‘What… what for?’

Randy said, opening the door and waving the two of them on through, ‘We’ll explain on the way, and by God, Grayson, please tell us you’ll do it. Please.’

Carrie no longer wanted to look at her watch or the fuel gauges. She just wanted to look at her Sean and at the Pennsylvania landscape beneath them, small cities and towns, tens of thousands of innocents alive down there, and here she was, with the unintended and unwanted power to sicken and kill them all. Sean was doing all right, though his hands trembled some and it looked like his eyes were filling up. She took a deep breath as her earphones came alive.

‘Carrie — I think we’re all set,’ Bocks said.

‘Thank you, General… and one more thing.’

‘What’s that?’

Carrie said, ‘Thanks for hiring me, when I got out of the Navy. I had… had some troubles, before I left. Some thought I wasn’t tough enough or hard enough to be a pilot. But you took a chance on me. Thank you.’