“I bet the antenna for that radio is at the bottom of the Atlantic,” Dunne said.
Parson switched to HF2. He got the same result.
“I hope to hell we haven’t lost both HF radios,” he said. “We’ll be deaf and dumb until we’re close enough to land for the VHFs to work.”
“I’ll check the circuit breakers,” Dunne said. Parson knew he was just going through the motions. Since the lightning strike and electrical fire, Dunne had been checking the breakers constantly. Parson decided to try a different frequency, using a call sign for any global Air Force station.
“Mainsail, Mainsail,” he said. “Air Evac Eight-Four.”
No answer.
“Mainsail,” Parson repeated. “Air Evac Eight-Four. Emergency aircraft.”
A woman’s voice came back, barely audible through the hiss: “Air Evac Eight-Four, Yokota. Go ahead.”
That wasn’t the answer Parson expected, but if nobody heard him except an air base in Japan, he’d talk to Japan. The radio operator sounded like a fourth grader. Parson didn’t care if he’d reached a teenage two-striper or a four-star general; he just wanted a phone patch.
“Good to hear you, Yokota,” he said. “Air Evac Eight-Four would like a patch to a DSN line at Scott Air Force Base.”
“Yokota’s ready to copy the number, sir.”
Parson read her the phone number. While he waited for the call to go through, he said over interphone, “They can’t hear me at Lajes, but we get an answer from the Far East?” It was a rhetorical question. Shortwave radio could work strangely, with its signals bouncing off the ionosphere. And it probably got even weirder if you were working with half an antenna.
When the radio operator spoke again, it sounded as if her voice were warbling through waves of interference, like a Cold War propaganda broadcast punched through a jamming signal. “Air Evac Eight-Four,” she said, “the Tanker Airlift Control Center is on the line.”
Parson identified himself and asked the flight manager to put ordnance disposal on the phone. A senior master sergeant picked up.
“Please tell me you know something about bombs,” Parson said.
“I’m a bomb tech instructor. But I can barely hear you, sir.”
“Yeah, we just came through a hailstorm and we also got hit by lightning.”
“You’re weak but readable,” the sergeant said. “How can I help you, sir?”
“We took some photos of the bomb in our tail section. We wanted to send them to you, but the lightning strike knocked out our satcom.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. It would help if I could see what we’re talking about.”
“What we think we have is a mercury switch on an antitamper circuit. We’re thinking about cutting the wire to that switch so we can jettison the bomb.”
“How did you determine all that?”
“We have a passenger who knows a little bit, but he’s not EOD.” Parson described the black rectangle and the two wires. Static hissed and roiled as Parson gave the bomb tech time to think.
“You say the bomb is in your tail section?”
“Affirmative.”
“Do you have a door nearby where you can pitch it out?”
This guy was thinking of a much smaller aircraft. But a bomb tech would have no reason to know the architecture of a C-5 Galaxy. Parson explained how he’d need to carry the bomb down a ladder, through the tail cone, into the troop compartment, then down another ladder to throw it out a paratroop door. He’d considered jettisoning it through hatches in the troop compartment, but from there it could impact the elevators or rudder.
“Sir,” the bomb tech said, “the problem is we don’t know if there are other antitamper measures you can’t see.”
“We’ve wondered about that, too.”
“I don’t like the idea of you toting that thing all over the airplane.”
“Do we have a choice?”
Another pause, unbroken static. Dunne spoke up on interphone. “What about the stabilizer access hatch?” he said.
“You can’t open that from the inside, can you?” Parson asked.
“You can if you drill out the bolts,” Dunne said. “It’s right by the tail ladder. If we can kick that thing open, all you have to do is pick up the bomb and drop it.”
“Do we have a drill?”
“In the crew chief’s toolbox.”
“Sergeant Dunne,” Parson said, “you might be the first guy I know to get a medal for destruction of government property.” Then he pressed his TRANSMIT switch and said, “I think we have a plan.”
STILL AT MAHSOUD’S SIDE IN THE CARGO COMPARTMENT,
Gold listened to Parson’s radio calls. She wasn’t sure she’d heard right, but it seemed that from over the middle of the Atlantic he’d reached a radio facility in the Pacific, which transferred him to a telephone in Illinois. Some Army troops considered the Air Force a technogeek’s alternative to military service, but zoomies could communicate; you had to give them that.
Through her headset, she followed the conversation until Parson signed off. “They talked to a bomb technician,” she told Mahsoud. “He believes you are right about your switch of liquid metal.”
Mahsoud nodded, and said in English, “I am very happy that I could help.” He spoke methodically. Gold noted that he never used broken English. He either said it right or switched to Pashto.
“So am I, my friend,” Gold said.
She did not know how much relief she should feel, certainly not how much to convey to Mahsoud and the others. Parson sounded encouraged, but he clearly had no guarantee this would work. Like a platoon commander in the middle of a firefight, he had to make decisions without complete information. And he’d have to live with the results of those decisions for the rest of his life, whether that was forty seconds or forty years.
At least they still had some chance, however small. To Gold, their lives were like guttering flames of candles not yet extinguished.
She kept her headset on, expecting instructions from Parson. He’d likely carry out his plan right away; she knew he tended toward action, perhaps to a fault. So it surprised her when he announced he’d hold off for a few hours.
“Why’s that?” Colman asked.
“Because that thing might go off,” Parson said. “If it does, it’ll probably just take us down. But what if you still have some control? I’d like to be closer to Johnston Island if that happens.”
“I see,” Colman said. He seemed nervous, and Gold understood why. Parson was describing a scenario unfolding after his own death. With Colman a brand-new lieutenant, left in command of a crippled jet. So Parson intended to move the bomb himself, and he didn’t necessarily expect to survive it.
In the meantime, other matters needed attention. Gold had promised Fawad she’d help him walk around, and he looked restless. She checked with the MCD, who gave her blessing. The aeromeds thought it would do him good. The air was smooth now, so it seemed fairly safe for patients to get up. Gold offered her hand to Fawad, and he pulled himself to a sitting position.
“How is your eye?” she asked in Pashto.
“Still painful,” he said.
“It is fortunate you were not inside the building.”
He swung his legs over the litter and placed his feet on the floor. Instead of his usual combat boots, he wore white socks with sandals. Fawad took a few shuffling steps, leaning on Gold. The eye wound was his only injury; Gold supposed his legs had fallen asleep. They walked aft down the cargo compartment.
“This airplane is so big one can go for a stroll,” Gold said.
Fawad did not respond to her attempt to make conversation. But then he said, “Is it true that the pilot has a plan to save us?”
“It is. He may or may not succeed, but he will most surely try.”
“The will of Allah shall be done.”
“Certainly.”
At the back of the cargo compartment, they came to the troop compartment ladder. “May we go up there?” Fawad asked.
“Can you manage the steps?”
“I can.”
“Then be careful. I will be right behind you.”
Fawad climbed the ladder a rung at a time. At the top, he stepped into the troop compartment near the galley and the negative pressure valves. It was empty now, with all the patients and aeromeds downstairs.
“The bomb is here?” Fawad asked.
Gold pointed to the pressure valves. “There,” she said, “in the tail. Do not think of it.”
Fawad looked around, walked down the aisle of the troop section. When he came to the two restrooms, he asked, “Is this a lavatory?”
“Yes,” Gold said. The odor of blue lav fluid hung in the air; it had evidently sloshed out of the toilets during the storm. Despite the smell, Gold thought how the airplane probably had more luxurious facilities than any home Fawad had ever known. He opened the door to one of the lavs, entered, and locked it behind him.
Gold heard him urinate for several seconds. Then he washed his hands. After a minute or so, he recited,
There is no god but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger.
Not in Pashto but in Arabic. Gold thought it was probably all the Arabic he knew.
He opened the door and stepped out. They went back down the aisle toward the ladder, and Fawad paused to peer out the window of the service door. He said nothing, and then he began descending the ladder.
As Gold followed him down, she looked forward across the cargo compartment. From above, she could see all the wounded, with the medics and nurses. She considered what might remain of everyone on board. Some had spouses and children who would be left behind—perhaps dozens of personal tragedies. Those without families would be forgotten more quickly. Their names would be listed on a memorial somewhere, unrecognized. Footnotes in history. Numbers and ranks in Pentagon records stored on disks that would eventually become obsolete and unreadable.
Fawad reached the bottom of the ladder and returned to his litter, but he did not lie down. “It is comfortable to walk,” he said. “May I see the cockpit, too?”
If he felt like more exercise, Gold thought, maybe that would improve his mood. Then he’d be less likely to bring everybody else down. She called Parson on interphone, and he said they could come on up.
When they reached the flight deck, Fawad looked in apparent wonder at the hundreds of switches and gauges. A dim yellow glow backlit all the instrumentation. Though Gold knew most of the technology was forty years old, she supposed Fawad was astounded.
“You Americans and your machines,” he said.
Dunne looked up when he heard the words in Pashto and he waved a greeting. “Is this Mahsoud?” he asked.
“No,” Gold said. “His name is Fawad. He’s a new police officer. Not from my class, though.”
Fawad looked closely at Dunne’s panel, as if he were trying to read the instruments. Then he looked up at the pilots’ panels. Gold hoped it was taking his mind off his pain and his situation. It was good of Parson to let him visit like this.
“Would you like tea?” Gold asked him.
“No, thank you,” Fawad said. Then he changed his mind. “Actually, yes.”
Gold went aft to the galley. As she poured water, she heard commotion, and turned.
Fawad had fallen onto the pilots’ center console. What was wrong? Could it be a seizure? She ran forward.
But it wasn’t a seizure.
“What the fuck?” Colman shouted.
Fawad was clawing at the switches around him. He seemed to be trying to hit all of them.
Parson wasted no time: he pulled his heavy flashlight from his helmet bag, and he swung hard. But the angle was wrong. The blow glanced across Fawad’s shoulder.
Fawad raised himself and yanked at the throttles, then he grabbed two of the four plastic T-handles on the center panel in front of him and pulled them.
Parson twisted in his seat and swung the flashlight again. This time he hit Fawad in the head. The Afghan screamed and lunged at Parson.
Dunne pulled his Beretta from underneath his flight suit. He grabbed Fawad by the hair, pressed the pistol against his temple, and pulled the trigger. The shot’s report slammed through the confined space of the cockpit. Gold felt it more than heard it.
Blood and brains spattered into Parson’s face and against the windscreen. The spent casing ricocheted off the instrument panel, bounced against the throttles, and spun across the floor. Fawad slumped over the center console. As his nervous system shut down, his left leg kicked as if he were trying to expel a rock from his shoe.
“That motherfucker killed the inboard engines!” Colman said.
Horror overcame Gold in waves. It had an almost physical force, a noxious liquid poisoning and drowning her at once. She could not process the scene before her. Emotion blocked reason; this simply could not happen.
But as she heard Parson issue commands and watched the crew push levers and flip switches, what logic she had left registered two facts: The airplane was in a rapid descent. And it was her fault.