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  A nudge on the thrust levers increased the rate of overtake, but Parson tried to be judicious with power. This was nothing like accelerating a car; he couldn’t just tap the brakes to slow down. Newton’s laws came into stark clarity—an object in motion tended to remain in motion, especially if it weighed hundreds of tons. Now the distance closed to yards, and Parson could discern the green light on the end of the KC-135’s boom.

  He slid his seat full forward and down. This wasn’t comfortable for someone so tall, but it gave him a better view of the boom and the pilot director lights on the underside of the tanker. The C-5 crept toward the other aircraft with agonizing slowness. Part of Parson’s mind wanted to hurry up and get the gas, but he tried to limit his closure rate to no more than one foot per second. Anything much faster and the bow wave from the C-5’s nose would create control problems for the tanker. He’d have to back off and start all over, and he knew he didn’t have the fuel for that.

  When he was fifty feet behind the boom and about ten feet below it, he pressed his TALK switch and said, “Eight-Four is stable.”

  “Cleared to contact position,” came the response.

  Parson watched the red and green lights on the tanker’s belly, made minor adjustments accordingly: Fly forward. Fly aft, Fly up, Fly down. The boom extended . . .

  And Parson felt his aircraft yaw, not from anything he’d done.

  “Flameout on number two,” Dunne said. Instruments for the number two engine, now starved of fuel, began dropping toward their zero points.

  A loud thump overhead.

  “Latched,” Dunne called.

  Parson pressed his right rudder pedal and added power on number one to try to stay on the boom. With uneven thrust, the jet wanted to fishtail. Parson’s feet, hands, and mind held it steady as if his flesh, blood, bones, and brain were mere systems of the aircraft.

  “Approaching aft limit,” the boom operator called over the radio. The boom was almost fully extended. If it reached its limit it would disconnect.

  “I got pressure and flow,” Dunne said.

  Parson struggled to stay within the arc of the tanker’s boom. He had to keep the nose of his aircraft within a space smaller than his kitchen—with a dead engine and partial hydraulics. If he broke away now, it was all over.

  “Flameout on number one,” Dunne called.

  The pilot director lights flickered between red and green as Parson fought the thrust levers and yoke.

  “Ignition on number two,” Dunne called.

  Out the corner of his eye, Parson saw that engine’s rpm spool up as fresh JP-8 fuel found its way to the spray nozzles in the combustion chamber.

  “Approaching forward limit,” the boom operator called. Parson adjusted his power almost imperceptibly, willing it more than physically moving it.

  “Ignition on number one,” Dunne called.

  Another yaw as that engine relit.

  “Left limit,” the boomer called.

  “LATCHED light out,” Dunne said.

  Parson tensed for engines to start failing again, and he pressed a rudder pedal with the toe of his boot.

  “Reset,” Dunne called. As calmly as if he were in a simulator.

  Parson pressed a button on his yoke, and the READY light came back on. The boom extended again.

  “Flameout on four,” Dunne called. Then he said, “Latched. Pressure and flow.”

  Number four reignited, and now Parson had all four engines back. Sweat dripped from the end of his nose. He realized he’d clenched his abdominal muscles so hard, they hurt. He tried to relax them, took a deep breath. Every tendon in his body stretched tight as a throttle cable. A knotted stomach won’t do anything but wear you out, he told himself.

  Parson held the aircraft as steady as he could, and he nulled out a little bit of leftward roll with a TRIM knob on the center console. “How much fuel we got on board now?” he asked.

  “About ten thousand pounds,” Dunne said.

  Maybe twenty minutes’ worth. “Let’s take it up to a hundred and fifty thousand,” Parson said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  With fuel flowing and the aircraft stable, Parson decided he could afford a break. “Can you take it for a while?” he asked Colman. The copilot placed his hands on the yoke and throttles, and he nodded. “Your airplane,” Parson said. “I got the radios. Don’t worry if you fall off the boom. We have enough gas now to take your time latching up again.”

  Colman did not fall off the boom. He flew formation with the Stratotanker so smoothly there was almost no relative motion between the planes, as if the sky were made of glass and the two aircraft embedded in it.

  GOLD WATCHED THE TANKER CLIMB AWAY and disappear above a night ocean the color of amethyst. She didn’t know how much hope to allow herself, but the crew had bought some time. And with their lives extended at least by a few hours, they could continue working the problems.

  She thought about Mahsoud and the others downstairs. The circle of their existence down to the dimensions of that cargo compartment—a purgatory of bloodstained metal, odors of aircraft fluids, and the sight of corpses.

  “Major,” she said, “before we go back to the tail, should we put those two bodies someplace where the patients can’t see them?”

  “Yeah,” Parson said, “we need to do that.”

  “We’ve placed them in bags,” the MCD said on interphone. “Where would you like us to take them?”

  After a pause, Parson said, “On the floor in the courier compartment, at the aft end of the flight deck.”

  That made sense to Gold. Nobody was sitting back there. But it meant pulling the dead up the flight deck ladder.

  “I’m going off headset,” Gold said. She’d gathered that was something she should say. “I’ll help move them.”

  “You’re cleared off,” Parson said. “Be careful on that ladder. I’m about to turn the airplane.”

  Gold unbuckled the nav seat’s harness and started downstairs. When she was halfway down the rungs, she felt the aircraft bank to the left, and she held to the handrail. Parson was resuming his westerly course toward Johnston Atoll.

  In the cargo compartment, Gold went first to Mahsoud. His breathing still seemed labored, but his color looked better, and he was awake.

  “How are you?” Gold asked in English.

  “I am well,” he said. “What is happening?”

  “The airplane nearly ran out of fuel, but we have plenty now. In a few minutes, we will go photograph the bomb.”

  Mahsoud nodded and gave a thin smile. Then he placed his head back down on his pillow and closed his eyes.

  Gold watched some of the loadmasters and aeromeds unzip their exposure suits. No need for them anymore, at least not for a while. The crew members struggled out of the rubber clothing and piled it over an unoccupied stretcher. The hoods had left their hair matted and sweaty, and dark patches of moisture stained the backs of their flight suits.

  The medics brought the two body bags to the foot of the flight deck ladder. With both hands, Gold took the end of one of the bags. She noticed smears of blood and hydraulic fluid; this was apparently the sergeant who’d gone mad. The MCD took the other end of the bag.

  They lifted it, and Gold led the way up the ladder. She climbed one rung at a time, gripping the body bag in her left fist and holding the rail with her right hand. Why were the dead so unaccountably heavy? Gold wanted to do this with some dignity. She pulled hard to keep her load off the steps, but it scraped along despite her efforts.

  When Gold shifted her footing for balance, she glanced down at the cargo compartment. Three loadmasters and one of the aeromeds held a salute, as custom required when moving the fallen.

  Gold reached the top of the steps, pushed open the folding door, and she and the MCD hoisted their burden onto the flight deck. Parson and his crew watched in silence. Gold picked up her end of the body bag with both hands and led the way past the galley, all the way aft to the courier compartment. Two aeromed
s followed with the second body. They left them on the darkened floor, between the rows of seats.

  Too bad we don’t have a chaplain on board, Gold thought. Someone to say something appropriate.

  She looked out a window just forward of the galley. Nothing visible from this view, neither a ship nor a star. Just glare reflected back from the plane’s interior lighting. It seemed the aircraft had become disassociated with the earth and sky—there was just the night, and the aircraft carrying its bomb like a terminal cancer.

  Gold felt her ears pop; the crew was apparently depressurizing the plane again. She worried about how that would affect Mahsoud, but she knew it had to be done. She dreaded returning to the noise and cold in the tail, too. Just another thing that couldn’t be helped.

  Up front, Parson was getting up from the pilot’s seat, untangling himself from harness straps and interphone cords.

  “You ready to do this?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”

  Gold took an oxygen cylinder from its mounting and checked the pressure. She carried the cylinder, an oxygen mask, and her headset down to the cargo compartment. She went to her pack, withdrew her camera, and placed it in a cargo pocket. Then she hunted through the pack until she found a T-shirt. She removed her ACU blouse and donned the fresh T-shirt over the one she already wore. As she buttoned the ACU blouse again, she noticed Fawad staring at her. Maybe I just offended him, she thought. He’ll get over it if he lives through this.

  The aeromeds were hovering over Mahsoud again. Probably watching him closely during the pressure change. Gold felt the swell in her ears again and she swallowed.

  Mahsoud looked at her, and she didn’t like what she saw in his eyes. Pain, maybe. Worry or fear. She went to his litter and placed her hand on his shoulder. “We are going to take that photo,” she said.

  “That is good,” he whispered.

  “Even while injured, you are fighting for your friends, Mahsoud. With your intellect. That is a fine thing.”

  “Thank you, teacher.”

  “There is an English poem,” Gold said. “I cannot remember all of it. But it says, ‘I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.’ ” She had quoted that line to an Afghan once before—to a teenage girl she’d visited at a hospital in Mazar-i-Sharif. From scars across the child’s face and neck, Gold could see how the acid had made her skin bubble and burn: the penalty for going to school. And the girl still wanted to learn.

  “I would like to read your poetry when I know your language better,” Mahsoud said. “What is this poem called?”

  “‘Invictus.’ It is a Latin word.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It means ‘unbeaten,’ Mahsoud. It means ‘undefeated.’”

  Mahsoud nodded, then raised himself slightly and looked out his window into the vastness of the night. For a better view, Gold put her hand over the glass to shade it from the airplane’s interior lighting. Her gesture revealed nebulas and galaxies drifting above, with other worlds and other troubles.

  14

  In the troop compartment, at the negative pressure relief valves, Parson noticed the placard: EMPENNAGE ACCESS—GROUND USE ONLY. He pulled on the flight jacket he’d borrowed from Dunne, and Gold draped a blanket around his shoulders. It was an awkward process because he had to work around his oxygen mask and the MA-1 cylinder he held by a carrying strap. It felt as though he were girding himself with battle armor.

  Gold breathed from an identical mask, and she wore her own oxygen cylinder around her shoulder. She had learned her lesson about touching cold-soaked metal; flight gloves now protected her hands.

  Parson eyed the pressure gauge on his oxygen supply. Every breath seemed to pull at the needle. No wonder: At eighteen thousand feet, you had only half of sea-level atmosphere. And here at twenty-five thousand, matters became even worse.

  When Gold handed him her camera, he placed it in a pocket of his flight suit on his lower leg. From another pocket, he took his Maglite and turned it on. Gold held open the pressure valve, and Parson crawled through.

  The cold hit him like a blast of ice water. His T-shirt was still clammy from the tension of refueling; now it seemed to close on his chest and freeze. He began to shiver almost immediately. This wasn’t the worst hypothermia he’d ever experienced, but it was damned sure the strangest.

  And the noise just made it worse. The god-awful howl of transonic wind right up against metal. Like the scream of a tornado about to blow apart a car, with the moment stopped and the sound sustained.

  Still on his hands and knees, Parson balanced on the catwalk and cradled his oxygen bottle and flashlight. Then he stood carefully, fearful of falling and losing his mask. He knew if that happened, he’d have only minutes to find it in the dark before he passed out.

  On his feet now, the vibration of the torque deck transmitted itself up through his boots. As a career flier, he knew well the stresses placed on an airplane in flight. But to feel them with human senses brought a whole new perspective. It reminded him of when he had once put on a protective glove and touched a live wire, felt the pulse and surge. It gave him frightening comprehension of a force he had understood only academically.

  Parson took small steps as he made his way aft. At the ladder leading up through the vertical stabilizer, he shone his light on another warning placard: TORQUE DECK SECTION. USE CAUTION WHEN WORKING OR TRAVERSING THIS AREA. So the designers of the C-5 considered it dangerous to be screwing around back here, he thought, and that was with the airplane sitting stock-still in a hangar. What would they think of all this?

  A shaft of light streamed from the negative pressure valves. The sight comforted Parson. That meant Gold was holding open one of the valves, watching him, but she was staying out of the tail like he’d told her. Dunne had confessed that Gold had rescued him when he lost consciousness. Parson knew he had to hurry up and finish the job or she’d have to rescue him, too. You could suck the oxygen out of these MA-1 bottles faster than you’d expect.

  He hung the oxygen bottle from his shoulder and placed the flashlight in a thigh pocket, still switched on. Then he mounted the ladder and climbed through the cramped space. The ladder twisted and buckled with the movement of the aircraft, as if it were trying to shake him off. About ten rungs up, Parson reached the compartment that held the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, twin orange boxes.

  He aimed his light at the recorders—and there it was, right between them. A green duffel bag, stuffed full with God only knew what. Wiring visible at the open end. Two prominent black wires leading from something—maybe a kind of sensor—taped to the outside of the bag. A cardboard box behind it, with no visible wires. More boxes and bags in the recesses of the tail section. What the hell have Dunne and I breathed in back here? Parson wondered.

  It became harder to inhale through the mask. Better hurry, he thought. The resistance meant the oxygen was running out. He would have liked to carry a spare bottle, but even one was cumbersome enough.

  Holding on to the ladder by the crook of his right arm, Parson placed the flashlight back in one pocket and withdrew the camera from another. With fingers numbed by cold, he fumbled to turn on the camera. He almost dropped it into sheet metal crevices below him, where it would have been irretrievable. When he finally got it powered up, he snapped a photo of the bomb. The flash hurt his eyes, but he took several more shots. It made him think of muzzle flashes in the night. Then he eased back down the ladder.

  As he moved, he thought about the placement of the bomb. It couldn’t be much worse. If it exploded where it was, it would almost certainly rip the tail off. He wondered if it would destroy the recorders, too. They were designed to withstand a crash, but what about a bomb right next to them? Not that they would do Parson and his crew and passengers any good. He just hoped the underwater acoustic beacon, mounted on the back of the voice recorder, would still work. It was designed to activate when it hit the water.
Then it would send out signals for thirty days so search ships could find the wreckage. At least that way the families might get some closure, knowing what happened and where.

  Back down on the catwalk, Parson tried to take a deep breath. But he got only a whiff, and the rubber mask collapsed against his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. Damned bottle is already empty, he thought. That means I got maybe three minutes of useful consciousness.

  He stepped forward, walking toward Gold and the light. The cold grew deeper, and Parson realized the blanket had slipped from around his shoulders; it must have caught on some part of the aircraft structure. He took a moment to look around for it. He didn’t care about losing the blanket, but he couldn’t have a foreign object bouncing around back here, fouling control cables. There were enough problems already.

  His light played across the catwalk, and the metal stringers and formers. Nothing. He retraced his steps back to the ladder and shone the Maglite up the rungs. Not there.

  The light from the negative pressure valves became brighter. Gold had opened one of them wider, and Parson suspected she was thinking about coming in after him. Maybe she believes I’ve gone hypoxic, he thought. Just stay where you are, Sergeant Major.

  Parson decided to give ten more seconds to his search. One Mississippi. He moved his flashlight beam around a cluster of hydraulic lines. Still nothing. Five Mississippi. He searched around the rack that held the HF receiver/transmitters. Eight Mississippi. He looked toward the stabilizer access hatch and found the blanket there, crumpled over the hatch. Parson bent down and grabbed it, then headed for the negative pressure valves to get out of the tail section.

  The light coming through the valves was fading, turning from yellow to gray. Parson could see only directly in front of him; his peripheral vision was gone. He could not recall exactly where he was, and he wanted to sit down and rest. Why was he so tired? It was too damned cold to hunt today, anyway. And where was his rifle?