Authors: Charles Hough
Scareforce
The young airman arrived at Charlie Fifty-four in the predawn hours of a Sunday. He was startled to see the shape of a crew
member sitting in the navigator’s seat of the B-52. The officer was in the shadow but it looked like he was doing some paperwork… in almost total darkness. The airman just stood on the hatch steps in confusion, trying to let his eyes adjust to the gloom.
The shape turned toward him and reached for the helmet in his hand. As it moved into the dim light from the hatch, the airman
was horrified to see that the body ended above the shoulders. He could clearly see the lieutenant’s bars on the flight suit,
but there was no head!
*****
It is the position of the air force that things such as ghosts and goblins do not exist. They have no basis in fact and are
therefore not officially recognized. It is also a fact that from that day on, even with the ramp as crowded as it was, the
air force never again used Charlie Fifty-four as a parking space for a B-52.
AND IT WILL TAKE YOU WITH IT—INSIDE
THE PAGES OF…
SCARE FORCE
“An entertaining revelation of the determination of ‘warriors’ to stand their watch, beyond the duration of life itself.”
—
Richard Marcinko, bestselling author of Rogue Warrior
WARNER BOOKS EDITION
Copyright © 1995 by Charles D. Hough
All rights reserved.
Warner Books, Inc.
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
.
First eBook Edition: September 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-56635-3
This book is dedicated to my father…
who wouldn’t have believed a word of it.
Contents
THE GHOST OF CHARLIE FIFTY-FOUR
T
HE United States Air Force is made up of men and women who are intelligent, professional, well trained, capable, and haunted.
I don’t mean to say that every single one of the 400,000-odd blue-suiters has his or her own personal specter to keep them
company. But if you can get them talking, if you can gain their confidence, if you can become a friend, then you might hear
strange tales and fantastic stories that stretch the imagination.
The military profession is unique. So are the people who live the life. They’re given the best training, armed with the most
advanced technology, and then pushed out to the edge to do impossible things.
After twenty-five years of association with the Air Force I’ve learned that strange things happen out there on the edge. When
the people and their machines are pushed to the limit, all that pressure sometimes leads to surprising experiences.
I’m not a trained parapsychologist or professional investigator of the paranormal. I don’t know where the things that go bump
in the night come from. I’ve heard conjecture that violent death creates ghosts. The Air Force provides its fair share of
that. The first aircraft fatality was a member of the military. Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge died in a plane crash in 1908 while
a member of a unit that evolved into the modern Air Force. And men and women of the Air Force have been dying in tragic ways
ever since.
But whether these specters are formed by violence or pain or fear or something entirely different, I know they’re out there.
The stories that follow are from my own experience and the experience of my friends. Some of the names have been changed.
Some of the places are different. But they’re all stories of the Air Force with a supernatural chill. Enjoy.
I
T was hard to lose friends to flying accidents, especially during peacetime training missions. But then again this wasn’t
really peacetime. The cold war generated situations like Alert and dangerous training missions. Alert is gone now, and the
missions are easier. But as you’ll see in the following story, all of the cold warriors haven’t been relieved of duty.
“On Alert again. Looks like they got me on Alert again.” Captain Gavin chuckled as the young gunner passed him, paraphrasing
a popular country ballad. Some of the humor wore off as he considered his own situation. On Alert again. Alert was a necessary
evil that helped to maintain the precarious balance of superpowers in the midst of a prolonged cold war. Here young men and
women, the cream of the crop of modern day warriors, were gathered on the threshold of Armageddon. They were pilots and crew
chiefs, navigators and bombardiers and munitions specialists. Together with their modern engine of war, the huge B-52 bomber,
they lived on the edge of the sword for seven days at a time. High, razor-topped fences, motion detectors, vicious guard dogs,
and a heavily armed security force kept them separated and protected from the normal world of the Air Force base. Protected
also from family and friends. Nothing must distract them from their task. They had to be always ready. They were as isolated
as if they were already in a war on foreign soil.
Captain Gavin felt that he had spent too many seven-day weeks poised on the sword’s edge. Being ready day and night to jump
into the mighty bomber and fly in the teeth of the most dreadful of battles was a young man’s game. The way he saw it, four
of his last twelve years had been spent in this Alert building prison.
Not that it was all that uncomfortable, as prisons go. The building was like a two-story, totally self-contained hotel. It
had its own kitchen and dining room to serve up to a hundred warriors. It had a library, a well-appointed game room full of
the latest video games, a couple of television lounges, and even a modern movie theater. It had its own fleet of vehicles
maintained by its own service station; the old-fashioned kind that really provided service. It had a full suite of offices
for the personnel who maintained this most exclusive of hotels, and a communications network that would have been the envy
of most multinational companies. The living quarters were private and well furnished. The fact that the lower story was buried
underground was only a little ominous. It was no more strange than the total lack of windows anywhere in the building. An
attempt had been made to alleviate the gloom through the use of brightly colored walls and an eclectic collection of paintings.
It was a vain attempt to relieve the air of doom from this final outpost on the road to nuclear holocaust.
The tension of Captain Gavin’s situation and his surroundings no longer had a serious effect on him. After twelve years he
felt only a little of the terror of his situation. What did cause fear and trembling in him was the thought of his desk creaking
under a terrible load of paperwork. Paperwork that was mostly overdue. And it looked like it was going to remain overdue for
at least another week. All Alert personnel were restricted to the building because of problems with the Klaxons. The Klaxons
were noisy horns located everywhere on the air base. Their banshee wail would summon the warriors to their planes when the
time for war was called. When they weren’t working, nobody left the building.
Dale Gavin sighed as he paced down the long main hall. He felt restless and uneasy. Here he was isolated from a mountain of
work. He guessed he should be grateful for the rest. All he really felt was boredom. When he had been a new young warrior,
Alert was exciting. The shared adversity drew the crews together in a camaraderie that was intense yet hard to describe to
an outsider. Crews were like a strange, six-way marriage. They worked as a unit and they suffered or triumphed together.
Now he wasn’t really a member of all this. He was the outsider. He was a staff officer drafted to fill a vacancy left by a
vacationing navigator. He had already played all the crew games and had been elevated to a different realm; an executive,
if you will. He was considered an “old head” by the crew dogs now. A reservoir of corporate knowledge. A seasoned veteran.
“Yeah,” he thought. “Old fart is more like it.”
Old Captain Gavin glanced up as the door at the end of the hallway swung open. He smiled as he recognized another “old head.”
It was Mike Delane, a longtime friend. They had started out in the command together, attending the same flying class. They
had been to war together and survived the danger of conflict and the boredom of Alert. Now they both served on the staff that
administered the bomber wing, teaching old tricks to new dogs.
Mike came sauntering up the hallway with the easy stride of a man confident enough to take it easy. Dale noticed the ubiquitous
coffee cup in his friend’s hand. Mike never seemed to be without it. He was looking down at the ground as he came, as if trying
to remember the punch line to an old joke or another war story. The younger flyers had been known to ply him with free beer
after long flights to loosen his memories of the outrageous youth of the command.
“See they caught you too,” Captain Gavin said as his friend drew near. “Guess they’ll let just about anybody defend the nation.”
Mike must have heard him. The corridor was quiet and empty except for the two. But he didn’t look up or acknowledge the greeting.
He just plodded on.
Dale was confused. Maybe Mike had a lot on his mind. He was about to repeat the greeting when Delane drew even with him. Mike
looked up; gazed steadily at Dale. Then he smiled slightly and winked. At that moment a cold breeze blew down the hall. Gavin
turned to the side to see who had opened one of the flight line doors. He turned back to comment on the strange chill to Mike
only to discover that the hallway was empty. Quickly he examined all the doors that led off the hallway. All were closed.
It was as if Mike Delane had disappeared into thin air.
“Very funny.” Gavin spoke to the empty corridor. “Aren’t you a little old to be playing hide-and-seek, Mike?” The last was
delivered with more conviction than he felt. He was aroused from his confusion by the loudspeaker on the wall above him.
“Captain Gavin, you’re wanted on the phone. Emergency!”
Dale forgot his missing friend as he sprinted down the hall to the communications room.
“Get your keys and be in front of the facility in five minutes. I need some crew training files, now!”
The wing commander’s voice rang in his ears as he headed to his room to retrieve his keys. Gooseflesh ran up his arms. A demand
for crew files like this usually meant only one thing in the flying business: an accident.