Silent Enemy Page 5

  She had never seen a view quite like this. When she traveled on military transports, it usually felt like a subway ride. Few windows where she rode, and small ones at that. Even when she jumped, it was from a much lower altitude, and she had other things on her mind: check the canopy, pull the risers apart if the shroud lines were twisted, aim for the drop zone.

  But this must be what God sees, she thought. So does He see us now? Could He help us now?

  Thy will be done. She left the prayer at that. Didn’t know what else to say. He already knows we want to live. Why state the obvious? Gold believed in prayer—but prayer for its own sake, to let your Maker know you were paying attention. Praying for a sick person, for example, was well and good. But did it actually change the outcome? If it did, that implied God needed man’s help. Impossible.

  Gold accepted that was a question she wasn’t meant to answer. She was a finite being, not programmed to comprehend the infinite. Right now the biggest question was whether she and her students would get off this plane alive. She felt she had a right to know. And she knew that question had no answer yet.

  Parson was pointing back toward the nav table, and Gold realized he was talking to her. “Put on that oxygen mask,” he said. “Dunne will show you how to hook up your headset to it.”

  “Sorry,” Gold said.

  “Crew,” Parson called, “I want everybody to put on a mask and prebreathe on one hundred percent in case we depressurize.”

  “I have two patients who might not live through that,” the MCD said.

  “Understood,” Parson said. “But I have to make the decision, ma’am. I’ll keep you advised.”

  Dunne helped Gold don the mask that hung from a clip over the navigator’s station. Her headset went silent when he unplugged it, but after Dunne reconnected it she heard Parson continue with his orders:

  “. . . Aft flight deck, go ahead and drop the passenger masks.”

  “Yes, sir.” Then, after a moment, “All right, we got the rubber jungle back here.”

  “Good,” Parson said. “Now everybody listen up and stay on your toes. We have a lot to do. Rendezvous checklist.”

  Gold breathed through the mask and tried to follow the commands and responses as Parson and his crew set up the jet for refuel. The pure oxygen she was inhaling felt good going down, a little cold. Like walking outside on a snowy New England morning and taking that first deep breath.

  Eventually, Parson and Colman began to point at something outside the windscreen. Gold leaned forward to look, and she saw a gray speck up ahead. As the distance narrowed, the speck took the form of an airplane. Not as big as the C-5 but as big as a heavy airliner.

  Dunne flipped rows of switches on the flight engineer’s panel, read from his checklist.

  “Air refueling door,” he called.

  “Clear to open,” Parson said.

  As the crew members spoke, their oxygen masks covered most of their faces. Gold had only their eyes for clues to their emotions. Not much there. This high-speed aerial ballet seemed routine to them.

  Dunne moved another toggle switch, and the whisper of the slipstream rose like the swell of orchestra strings in some mournful adagio. Gold noticed two lights illuminate on Dunne’s panel: DOOR NOT LOCKED and READY.

  The airplane began to shudder. It felt different from the jolting ride inside the cumulus clouds several minutes earlier. A steadier shaking. The motion reminded Gold of speeding along one of Afghanistan’s washboard dirt roads in a Humvee. But with no visual cues to help make sense of the vibration, it made her a little sick.

  When she looked outside again, what she saw made her grip her armrest. The tanker filled the windscreen, impossibly close. A refueling boom extended from the KC-10’s tail section, seemed about to spear through the glass.

  “Air Evac Eight-Four,” called a voice on the radio, “you’re cleared into position.”

  “Cleared into position,” Parson answered as he pulled on his flight gloves.

  He put his hand on the throttles but seemed barely to move them at all. The tanker grew larger in the windscreen; collision appeared imminent. Then the two airplanes stabilized, locked into position with little relative motion except for the constant chop of rough air.

  Something banged into the C-5, directly over Gold’s head, and startled her. Was that supposed to happen? None of the crew seemed concerned.

  “Latched,” Dunne said.

  “Contact,” called a voice on the radio.

  “I have pressure—and flow,” Dunne said.

  No one said anything for a few minutes. Parson seemed deep in concentration, left hand on the yoke, right hand on the throttles. Hissing roars all around: the rush of air and the flow of fuel.

  Then Dunne spoke again. “Shell Two-One,” he called, “Air Evac Eight-Four. Can you cut back your pressure? You’re approaching my manifold limit.”

  “Roger that. Sorry.”

  “Guess they want to off-load the gas as soon as possible,” Colman said, “so they can get the hell away from us.”

  “I’d want to get away from us, too,” Parson said.

  When Gold looked outside again, she saw the two fighters, smaller now that they were keeping distance during the refueling. Twin steel arrowheads slicing through the sky. She wondered how long they would follow the C-5, waiting to pull the trigger to take it down. One of them called on the radio:

  “Shell, Gunfighter. We’re almost bingo fuel. Can you gas us up next?”

  “Affirmative. Two hundred and sixty thousand pounds on board.”

  “We heard about the C-130 that blew up. You guys have any other word about what’s going on?”

  A few moments of static. Then: “Before we left Manas, command post said a C-17 was overdue.”

  Gold held her breath, saw the blinker on her oxygen regulator flip from white to black. Thought about prayer again. Deliver us from evil. The police center bombing, followed by all this. It was starting to remind her of September 11th. Simultaneous attacks, something clearly planned for years.

  “I wonder if they got another plane,” Dunne said.

  “Sounds like it,” Parson said. Gold watched him clasping and unclasping his gloved right hand over the throttles. The flight glove looked new, and the sun’s angle gave it a sheen that made Gold think of chain mail.

  She considered the C-130 that had exploded, the C-17 that had likely suffered the same fate. Perhaps their crews didn’t know of the bomb threat; perhaps they could not refuel in the air. Gold realized the same thing might have happened to Parson if he’d not been delayed by the change in his mission and destination. The time it took to reconfigure the airplane for a medical flight had bought him the knowledge of what he could be facing.

  After a few more minutes, a voice on the radio said, “Air Evac Eight-Four, off-load complete. One hundred and fifty-one thousand pounds.”

  “Copy that,” Colman said. “Request disconnect.”

  The LATCHED light winked out, and the tanker seemed to creep forward.

  “Post air refueling checklist,” Parson said.

  More commands and responses as Dunne read the checklist. The slipstream’s roar quieted to a murmur after Dunne closed the AR door. Parson was still clenching and opening his fingers. Gold wondered what was going through his mind. When Dunne declared the checklist complete, Parson sighed so hard Gold could see his shoulders move against his harness straps.

  “We haven’t finished searching the airplane,” Parson said. “MCD, are the patients prepared?”

  “They’re as sedated as much as we can, but it won’t make much difference.”

  “Ma’am, I think we need to do this.”

  “Major,” the MCD said, “either there’s a bomb on board or there isn’t. If there is, you can’t do much about it.”

  “We won’t know what we can do about it until we find it,” Parson said.

  “I’ve told you what could happen if you depressurize. If you do and there’s nothing in the tail section,
God help you.”

  No one spoke for several seconds. The KC-10 was banking away far to the right, the two F-15s lining up behind it. Faint smudges of exhaust trailed from their engines. Clouds threw shadows like dark stains on the sea below.

  “What do you want me to do, sir?” Dunne asked.

  “Engineer,” Parson said, “depressurize this aircraft.”

  5

  Parson turned to see Dunne flip the pressurization master switch to RATE DEPRESS. At first, Parson felt no change, but then the air inside his ears began to expand. He swallowed, heard the pop inside his eustachian tubes.

  Dunne was being careful. Maybe this slow rise in cabin altitude would make it easier on the patients. At two or three hundred feet per minute, it would take the better part of an hour to depressurize. With some luck, perhaps their ears, sinuses, and wounds could adjust.

  Parson knew the easiest course would be to call the search complete right now and try to land. No one would blame him for that. If he did anything else, investigators might spend weeks and months second-guessing decisions he made in minutes. But what if something detonated on descent? He’d leave this world knowing he let people down because he didn’t do enough. Because he shrank from making a tough call.

  After several minutes, the CABIN ALT warning light came on. As the aircraft depressurized, the thinning atmosphere inside it was above ten thousand feet now. Fifteen thousand to go to reach ambient outside pressure.

  “Everybody all right?” Parson asked. “Crew, check in.”

  “Copilot’s good.”

  “Engineer’s okay.”

  “Cargo.”

  The rest of the crew called in from the aft flight deck’s rest area and the troop compartment.

  “Thanks, guys,” Parson said. “Keep an eye on yourselves and each other. Remember the signs of hypoxia from your altitude chamber training.” Tunnel vision and grayout, slurred or irrational speech, lips turned blue from cyanosis.

  During Parson’s days in the C-130, he had done a number of high-altitude airdrops, letting out SEALs, Green Berets, or PJs so high up the jumpers had to breathe from oxygen bottles during their free fall. The airmen who flew those missions ran cabin altitude checklists to monitor one another, to make sure no one passed out from a loose oxygen mask or a bad hose connection. It all became second nature.

  But to this young C-5 crew, that kind of thing was exotic special ops. You wouldn’t normally operate a Galaxy this way, and Parson knew he’d need to talk them through every step. He was in his late thirties, and that copilot Colman looked about twelve. Decent stick-and-rudder skills, and smart enough, but certainly not ready for anything like this. An Academy grad who bled Air Force blue. He seemed to get a haircut every week. The guy even kept the tabs on his flight suit zippers tucked under the fabric so they wouldn’t protrude.

  Dunne was older, around forty-five. An activated reservist. Parson seemed to recall Dunne had put in twenty years with the regular Air Force before going back to the family cattle business in Tennessee. Thank God, they gave me an experienced flight engineer, Parson thought, since I have so little time in this plane. And the loadmasters were all kids. Parson had to check the flight orders to remember their names.

  Unlike his old C-130 crew, they were not his brothers. He did not know how they would react in any given situation. He could not communicate with them merely by a wave of his grease pencil or a double click of his interphone switch. The only crew he had ever known that well had gone down with him in Afghanistan, and he was the sole survivor.

  These crew members were his responsibility, but they were not his family. At least not yet.

  Gold was something different. She had seen his best and his worst. She was the only person in the world who knew exactly what he’d been through, how it had changed him, and how it had cost him. Parson had a hard time defining his feelings for Sergeant Major Sophia Gold, U.S. Army.

  As cabin altitude rose, a warning tone blared through the cockpit. Colman looked around the flight deck, seemed unsure what to do.

  “It’s above you,” Parson said.

  Colman moved his index finger toward the switches and rheostats on the overhead panel.

  “No,” Parson said. “Farther right.”

  Colman pushed the SILENCE button, and the tone stopped.

  “Everything okay?” called a loadmaster from downstairs.

  Parson pressed his TALK switch and said, “Affirmative. Just a warning horn because we’re depressurizing. How are the patients doing?”

  “I don’t know. The aeromeds are working on one of them.”

  “MCD,” Parson said, “what’s the status?”

  No answer.

  “She’s off headset, sir,” the loadmaster said.

  Parson heard commotion in the background when the loadmaster pushed his TALK switch. Then someone shouted. Parson heard it all the way from the cargo compartment without benefit of the interphone system.

  “One of the patients is freaking out,” the loadmaster called.

  Another shout. Then a full-throated scream.

  Clicks and hiss on the interphone. A voice said, “Get him—”

  “Sergeant Gold,” Parson said, “look down there and tell me what’s going on.”

  Gold got up from the nav table and slid open the flight deck door, next to her seat. She disappeared down the steps, went as far as her oxygen hose and interphone cord allowed.

  “It’s that American sergeant,” Gold said. “They have him on the floor.”

  “Is he one of those with a head injury?” Parson asked.

  “I think so.”

  So it’s happening, Parson thought. I’m killing him. Just as surely as if I went down the ladder and shot him. And that would be more merciful. Dear God, what if this is the wrong decision?

  “Do you want me to level off the cabin pressure?” Dunne asked. He put his hand on the master switch.

  That sergeant has a mother, Parson thought. A girlfriend or a wife. Maybe children. Parson felt as if his moral compass had spun, could not find its cardinal headings.

  “Sir?” Dunne said.

  Everyone on board has a family, Parson told himself. The chaplains will be visiting; it’s only a question of how many.

  “Negative,” Parson said.

  He checked his radar display as if it held answers. But it told him only that there were light scattered showers ahead and below. Green splotches across a cathode-ray tube. Outside, the sun lit up the nimbus clouds like they were incandescent, and in places the light refracted into colored bands.

  A squeal and a pop came over the interphone as someone plugged in an audio jack.

  “MCD back on headset,” the lieutenant colonel said. “We have a patient restrained.”

  “What about the other one?” Parson asked. “Weren’t there two with head injuries?”

  Seconds ticked by with no response. Nothing on interphone but electronic hum.

  “That one’s already dead.”

  GOLD SAW THAT DUNNE WAS CONCENTRATING on a gauge in the middle of his panel. It had large and small hands like a clock, but this was different. The big hand crept toward zero while the little hand reached twenty-five thousand.

  “Almost there,” Dunne said. “All right, zero differential. We’re depressurized.”

  “I still need that volunteer,” Parson said.

  “Can I do it?” Gold asked.

  “Thanks,” Parson said, “but I need someone who knows the airplane.”

  “I’ll go,” Dunne said. “Just get the scanner to watch the panel for me.”

  “Good,” Parson said. “Bundle up, if you can.”

  Not much to do that with, Gold thought. I’d offer him a coat, if I could, but who carries a coat around during warm months in Kabul?

  “Hey, Gold,” Parson said. “There is something you can do. Go with Dunne and keep an eye on him.”

  “Yes, sir,” Gold said.

  “Don’t follow him into the tail section. Just watch
him from those negative pressure relief valves. You’ll see what I mean when you get there. Take my flashlight.”

  Parson reached into his helmet bag and pulled out a Maglite, passed it to Gold. It felt substantial in her hand, loaded with D cells. The kind police carried because it could double as a blackjack.

  From the bulkhead behind his seat, Dunne lifted a yellow metal bottle with a mask attached to it.

  “Do you know how to use these MA-1 cylinders?” he asked.

  “No,” Gold said.

  “There’s one for you in front of the nav table. Take off the mask you’re wearing now and use the one on the walkaround bottle.”

  Gold found the MA-1 bottle and switched masks.

  “Disconnect your headset,” Dunne added. “When we get back there, you can plug into the interphone with this.” Dunne showed her the audio connections on the oxygen bottle’s mask. Then he pointed to a gauge on the bottle and said, “Keep an eye on this needle. When your oxygen gets low, refill it like I show you.”

  Dunne detached a silver hose mounted on the cockpit wall, plugged it into a port on the bottle. Gold heard a pneumatic hiss, saw the pressure needle rise.

  “This refills it from the ship’s supply,” he said. “We got plenty of liquid oxygen on board.”

  “Is that liquid in the bottle?” Gold asked.

  “No. It turns to gas before it gets that far.”

  Gold found that her bottle had a nylon strap. She put the strap across her shoulder, leaving her hands free to carry the flashlight. Dunne pulled on his flying gloves, donned what Gold supposed was a summer-weight flight jacket. Then he went aft to a crew bunk room and came back with a green U.S.-issued blanket.

  “Are you ready to do this?” Dunne asked.

  “I think so,” Gold said.

  “You guys be careful,” Parson said. “Sergeant Major, all you need to do is watch him, and let us know if anything’s wrong.”

  “Yes, sir,” Gold said. “Hooah.”

  Parson looked at her strangely, and she reminded herself these flyboys spoke a different language. Maybe they didn’t know what HUA meant: Heard, Understood, Acknowledged.