Scareforce (10 page)

The powers-that-be noticed this. They noticed that the targets were getting destroyed. They noticed that the enemy was getting
less and less anxious to engage their fighters. And they noticed that more of their young warriors were returning to their
bases to fight another day.

They noticed and they went out of their way to show their gratitude. Every chance they got they were around Harry and his
friends, shaking hands, slapping backs, and buying drinks. They always had time to answer questions and stay after a flight
and help solve problems. They remembered names and faces. And they thought of ways to recognize and reward the superhuman
efforts of all the people who worked behind the lines in the war effort.

At the base where Harry worked, the commander spent much time talking to his people. He had learned a lot about them. And
he had learned an amazing fact. Many of the young men who worked so hard for the air war effort had never themselves flown
in an airplane other than the airliner that brought them to the war. This was unheard of to the colonel. He had grown up flying.
He lived to fly. He thought that the greatest thing a man could do was to strap on a big jet, like the F-4, and swoop into
the skies.

The colonel was a man who could get things done. He resolved to do something about this situation. He had to show his people
some of the good things about the flying business. He called in his flight leaders and then he called in the commanders of
all the support squadrons. He proposed to them a reward system for their workers. When they singled out a man or woman for
duty above and beyond, in addition to the medal or certificate that was the usual reward, the colonel and his men would add
something. If the honoree liked, the commander would provide a ride in one of the company war birds with a seasoned fighter
pilot.

The word spread like wildfire through Harry’s squadron. Men who were tasked to the maximum now worked harder. Everyone wanted
a chance to slip the surly bounds of earth in the Air Force’s best fighter. Harry felt the same. He worked with the goal in
mind for the next week. Then work drove it out of his mind.

Harry was assigned to start arming the big jets with a new generation weapon, a so-called smart bomb. The Air Force didn’t
like that term. It seemed to imply that the rest of their munitions were dumb. But the bomb looked smart. It seemed to intimidate
by its obvious technical sophistication. Harry sweated over the specs for the new bomb. He learned everything he could through
long hours of study. Then he spent even longer hours briefing the crews on how the weapon worked. They listened to Harry.
He quickly became their expert. And when they finally took the new “smart bomb” out to introduce it to the war, it worked
better than advertised.

When they rode back to the base after employing their smart friend, they couldn’t stop talking about it. How the weapon swept
through the jungle, avoiding the wrong points and finding the target. How it actually flew into the mouth of a cave and eliminated
a cache of weapons that Charlie had stored inside.

And when the shouting was done, they remembered Harry. The crews themselves put him in for a medal for all his long and hard
work to arm them with this wonder weapon. They saw to it that the paperwork went through as fast as possible. And they carried
the orders to Harry themselves.

Harry was amazed that they had gone to this trouble. He was embarrassed by all the attention over someone just doing his job.
But when they reminded him of the added bonus that went with the medal, Harry couldn’t contain his glee. Finally he would
get to blast off in the backseat of a supersonic Phantom.

The day of his flight dawned on perfect weather. Harry was up and ready a full two hours before he was to report to Base Operations.
He hung around the windows to the flight line, cheering inwardly every time an F-4 climbed out on the end of a bright blue
flame.

“Hi, Harry, I guess I’m your chauffeur for the day.”

Harry swung away from the window and promptly tripped over his own tongue. The speaker, the pilot assigned to take him up
on his reward flight, was none other than the vice wing commander.

“Yes sir, I guess sir, thank you sir.” Harry saluted so hard he almost hurt his forehead. The colonel put him at ease immediately
and headed him out to the flight line. On the way to their designated jet, he talked to Harry about the operation of the weapons
shop. Harry was amazed to find out just how much the old man new about the operation. By the time the colonel helped him strap
into the fighter’s rear ejection seat, Harry felt as though they were old friends.

With the cockpit canopy closed the sound of the big jet was totally different on the inside. It was rumbling that you felt
more than heard. Even taxiing out to the runway was a thrill. Harry waved to a weapons crew as they drove by, not realizing
that the helmet and oxygen mask he wore were a perfect disguise.

As they lined up on the runway, Harry glanced around his cockpit. The area was covered with strange gauges, instruments, and
switches. He was being very careful. He didn’t want to accidently touch anything that could blast him and the pilot out of
the plane. He watched the pilot in front of him turn and query with a thumbs-up. Harry smiled and returned the thumbs-up gesture.
He was ready for the best ride on the midway.

Harry watched over the colonel’s shoulder as he flipped a switch and advanced the throttles. He heard the tower instructions
over the radio receiver in his helmet. They were cleared for takeoff.

The noise increased and then the afterburners roared. They didn’t explode like those of the F-105. They just snuck up on you
until the whole world seemed to be vibrating in resonance with them. Then the pilot popped the brakes loose and the jet leaped
forward.

Before he could breathe or think, the huge warplane was airborne. Harry felt the acceleration like a giant hand pressing him
deeper and deeper into the seat.

“How you doing back there, GIB?”

It took a minute for Harry to remember that he was the GIB, the guy-in-back. It took a couple of more minutes for him to remember
to talk. When he did he could only stammer out “Great!” Wonderful. Here he was getting the biggest thrill of his life and
he sounded like a cartoon character selling breakfast cereal.

But the colonel just laughed and said, “Okay, hold on to your socks.”

Harry stiffened as the world suddenly tilted to the right. For an instant he felt that he was going to fall out of the aircraft.
Then, as they rolled past sideways toward inverted, a funny thing happened. Harry started to like it. This time he was much
more articulate when he spoke to the colonel. Over the interphone he calmly and clearly stated, “Wheeuh!“

Time flew as they flew. The commander put the big jet through its paces and seemed to be having as much fun as Harry. He was
delighted that the young man was enjoying all the radical maneuvers. He pointed out the beauty of the jungle from the sky.
It was a different world when they flew over it rather than walked on it. Then, much too soon, it was time to head for the
base and the mundane earth.

They flew over the runway too high to land. The colonel explained that it was part of the routine to get clearance to land.
The tower answered their radio request for landing and the colonel banked the jet sharply to the right. As they headed back
to line up for a landing, the colonel was telling Harry that he thought he must be a born flyer. He was in the middle of a
sentence when he stopped abruptly.

Harry was looking at the runway from above and abeam it so he didn’t notice at first. He looked up and saw that the colonel
seemed to be slumped to the right. His helmet rested against the canopy window.

“You okay, sir?” he asked over the interphone.

There was no reply. The F-4 sailed calmly ahead. The stick between Harry’s legs remained steady. It was tied to the colonel’s
controls and mimicked his every move.

Harry tried to talk to the colonel again and again received no reply.
Maybe the interphone is broken,
he thought. He recalled the abrupt way the colonel’s voice had stopped right in the middle of a sentence.

The colonel’s head continued to rest against the window and seemed to rock gently with the motion of the jet. They passed
far beyond the end of the runway. Harry was about to try and reach the colonel with his hand to see if everything was all
right when the stick moved to the right and the F-4 banked gracefully to return to the runway.

Harry knew that landing was the most critical phase of any flight. Pilots had explained that the jet that flew so well in
high-speed combat was a real handful to land. It didn’t go slow gracefully. Harry didn’t want to bother the colonel while
he was making all the careful adjustments to the controls to bring them safely back to earth. He sat back and watched the
show.

They seemed to glide down final approach. The pilot’s touch was so good that they were rolling down the runway before Harry
knew they had landed.

The roar of the big jets receded as they coasted to the end of the long concrete strip. The colonel guided them expertly off
the taxiway at the end of the runway. Harry watched as his pedals went to the floor as the colonel pressed his to lock the
brakes. The Phantom came to a complete stop. Harry’s dream flight was over. It was now one of his favorite memories. He waited
for the colonel to turn and tell him how to climb out of the big bird.

But the colonel didn’t turn. He didn’t move. He sat slightly forward in the seat with his head resting against the cockpit
glass.

Harry waited and waited. Then he grew anxious. He pulled off his flight glove and fiddled with the parachute harness. He finally
freed the chest strap enough to reach forward and touch the colonel’s shoulder. One touch told him something was wrong, dreadfully
wrong.

“Hey, Colonel, hey sir, what’s wrong?” Harry shook the colonel. There was no response. The vice commander remained where he
was.

Harry started to panic. He was sitting in a jet with the engines running and the hatch closed and he had no idea how to open
the door or call for help.

He looked frantically around the cockpit, trying to find something that looked like a radio switch. He was afraid to touch
anything. Somewhere in that maze was a switch that would send him rocking out in the ejection seat. He heard the tower ask
if anything was wrong and he heard another voice. It took him a while to realize it was his own voice. He was babbling, trying
to wake the colonel, trying to find the switch. Finally he got enough courage to press the button by the throttle switches.

“Hey help. Something’s wrong with the pilot. I’m stuck in this F-4 and I can’t get the colonel to wake up. You better send
for a doctor or get an ambulance.”

“Okay, friend, just sit tight. Help’s on the way.” The tower message in his radio receiver was like the word of God to Harry.
“Oh, and maybe you better not touch anything until they get there,” the angel added.

Harry sat on the raised bed in the doctor’s office. He couldn’t stop shaking. He didn’t really feel the needle when the medic
gave him the shot.

“Hang in there, buddy. This’ll make you feel a whole lot better. Really good drugs.”

Harry smiled a weak smile. He felt a warmth spreading from his arm and he seemed to be able to control his shivering a little
better.

“You must be some natural pilot. The tower guys said you made a perfect landing. Just like a pro. You must have had some lessons
or something, huh?“

“What are you talking about?” Harry looked at the young intern in confusion. “I didn’t land the plane. The colonel did.”

“Uh-uh. Couldn’t have. Doc said he was dead long before touchdown. Must have been a really severe heart attack. You should
have seen his face. We didn’t even know it was the vice commander until we checked his ID. He had to have been dead for about
twenty to thirty minutes.”

In spite of the drug coursing through his veins, Harry started to shake again. All of the blood drained from his face. The
young medic was startled.

“Hey somebody give me a hand here,” he yelled. “This guy’s going into shock.”

Well, yes,
Harry thought as strong hands laid him on the bed.
I guess it is shock. But it’s probably a different type of shock than they think.
It was the shock of recognition. Harry had just realized who had landed his airplane.

The colonel must have earned another set of wings… in another kind of air force.

I
’VE been through combat and flight training and long late missions in an old aircraft in bad weather but none of these experiences
ever affected me as much as trying to help out in my wife’s preschool class. She’s a good teacher. Hell, she’s a great teacher.
Just ask her students. Some of them may be a little more difficult to communicate with than others. But she seems to get through.

There are many things that abound on military bases. Everyone knows they have a lot of weapons. They also have a lot of cars
and trucks and aircraft and tanks. Bases have a lot of signs and fences and locked doors. And they have a whole lot of serious,
efficient men and women in many different uniforms.

But military bases also have a lot of something else that you may not have thought of. They have a whole lot of children.

Believe it or not, military kids, or military brats as they refer to themselves, are really a lot like kids everywhere. They
go through the same feelings and foibles and fads that civilian kids do. They’re just like the kids on any block, with one
difference. They have probably been around a whole lot more blocks than most kids.

Military kids learn a few things that others kids don’t get exposed to. They learn that you never write your friend’s address
in your book in ink. They learn how to memorize a new phone number in record time. They learn how to find their way back home
even if they aren’t sure exactly what home is. They learn how to avoid the new kid syndrome or at least how to get over it
quickly. They can learn a new teacher’s name, a new street number, and a new zip code with relative ease. And they learn that
you don’t die from being homesick.