The Warbirds (23 page)

The plane was turning away from him when he saw the canopies fly off and the backseater eject parallel to the ground. Then the frontseater came out, but his vector was
pointed slightly down and the birdwatcher was sure that he would hit the ground before his chute had time to open. Once the crew had separated from the Phantom, the warbird pitched back up and danced on its tail before flopping onto its back and crashing into the woods less than a thousand feet from the end of the runway. He watched the first parachute deploy and swing once before the strong east wind blew it back onto the runway. The second chute snapped open as the man hit the ground. The birdwatcher did not know if it had opened in time. The seat bounced less than twenty yards away from the pilot.

The birdwatcher had managed to capture the entire sequence on film. Should be worth a fair price to the media, he thought…

The controller in the tower reached for the crash phone the instant he saw the Phantom pitch up. He had seen films of F-100s doing their “Sabre Dance” from over-rotating on takeoff and prayed the Martin-Baker ejection seat was good enough to get the crew out. Instead of keying the crash net he kept shouting, “Left, left, goddamn it…” To the right of the runway he could see the village where his family lived. When he saw the F-4’s nose come down and the canopies fly off he gave the warning, “Attention on the net, attention on the net.
Crash Alert, Crash Alert!
F-4 crash off departure end of runway zero-nine. Repeat, F-4 crash off departure end of runway zero-nine. This is not a drill. All units standby for coordinates. Two parachutes sighted. Parachutes at departure end of runway zero-nine. Crash at Juliet-Ten. Repeat. Juliet-Ten.”

He could hear the sirens start to wail, and glanced at the flying schedule, checking the name of the pilot that had directed his disabled jet away from the village. “I owe you big time, Bull Morgan.”

Normal activity on the base suddenly halted as the wing reacted to the crash alert. The emergency actions controller in the command post notified Colonels Bradley and Hawkins, then started an accountability check of all the wing’s aircraft that were airborne. By the time Bradley entered the command post the controller had identified the aircraft, pilot, and weapons systems officer. “It wasn’t Waters. He’s dumping fuel and will land in about fifteen
minutes,” he told the colonel, then sent out a flash message to the three levels of higher headquarters above the wing. Now they had to wait.

“Ambler, now’s when we’ve got to be cool,” Waters told his backseater after the command post had called him for an accountability check and given him an RTB, return to base. “We’ve lost another bird and my ass is in a crack. But we are going to recover by the numbers. What’s the first thing I’ve got to do to get our baby on the ground?”

“Dump fuel to get our landing weight down,” the wizzo said quickly.

“Rog, dumping fuel now.” Waters’ hand poised over the fuel-dump switch and waited.

“Not over land,” Ambler shouted, “over water.”

“Right. Now you’re doing your job. You know how, so do it.”

The ejection out of the F-4 provided Doc Landis with the wildest ride he’d ever experienced. When Bull had shouted, “Eject, eject,” he had reached for the ejection handle between his legs, only to find it blocked by the stick that was full-back against the seat and the handle. He had reached above his head and pulled on the face-curtain handles, which also started the ejection sequence for both men. The ejection gun fired, propelling the seat up the guide rails, igniting the rocket pack under the seat and sending Landis out of the airplane with a twelve-G kick. In quick sequence he felt a series of jerks as first the controller drogue chute, then the stabilizer drogue chute and the main parachute deployed. In less than three-and-a-half seconds after he pulled the handle, Landis had separated from the seat, taken one swing in his parachute and landed on the runway. As he did, everything that Thunder had taught him came back in a rush. He hit the quick release clips on his chest, releasing the big chute before it could drag him over the ground, then ran toward the other parachute that was still inflated and dragging Bull through the grass. He jumped into the canopy’s fabric, grabbing and pulling until the chute collapsed, quickly rolled the big pilot over, releasing the parachute risers from his har
ness should the parachute canopy reinflate in the wind. “Hell of a day, Doc,” Bull Morgan said, looking up at Landis. “You wouldn’t happen to have a beer on you?”

“Lay down,” Landis ordered. “You may be hurt, are likely in a state of shock.” But when he quickly examined the man he found him only bruised, scratched and filthy from being dragged through the grass.

Bull shook his head. “Doc, you went out too. Why don’t you join me and we’ll swap lies till the crash trucks get here.”

The first crash truck on the scene found them lying in the short grass on their back, side by side, laughing like loons.

At the hospital they were just coming out of the lab where a technician had taken the obligatory blood samples for drugs or alcohol when Waters found them.

“What happened?”

Bull stood in the corridor, hands on hips and leaning forward into the colonel. “Maintenance again, Colonel. I’m going to nail their asses—”

“Bull, take it easy,” Waters said. “You’ve been through ejections before. Save what you’ve got for the accident board.” That’s all we need, Waters thought,
two
accident boards on-base at the same time.

“What do we do now?” Landis said.

“The flying safety officer is around here someplace and will want to talk to us,” Bull told him. “But right now I’m going over to Maintenance and find the flight-controls specialist that worked on the bird last.”

“What the hell happened?” Landis pressed.

“The goddamn stick programmed full-aft when we lifted off; the bird was trying to do a loop. We didn’t have the airspeed or the altitude for that. I used the rudder to roll us into a ninety-degree bank to the left, which put us into a tight left turn away from the village. Except our lift vector was perpendicular to good old gravity and we didn’t have a hell of a lot of airspeed to help us out. That’s when I told you to eject us. And
that’s
what goddamn happened.”

“But why are you going to Maintenance?”

“The bird was trying to do the same thing yesterday but I broke the stick free. I wrote it up in the maintenance forms and even told them it was a problem with a leaking actuator valve. Airman Siebold didn’t do his job right when he signed it off and I’m just going to explain a few things to him…”

The doctor trailed after the Bull, trying to talk him out of going to Maintenance. But he went directly to the flight control shop and found the young airman who had repaired the Phantom. To Doc’s surprise, though, Morgan sat the young man down and talked quietly with him, gesturing with his hands and, as he said he would, explaining what had happened. Then he took the nineteen-year-old to a work bench and disassembled an actuator valve like the one that had failed and caused the accident, showing what went wrong. Before he left he gave the airman’s rear a swat and told him to take it easy.

“That’s the way Colonel Waters handled things at Nellis and Bitburg,” Bull said. “Works good with young troops. The kid will feel like a shithead for a few days, but he’ll learn. He better. I stop being Mr. Nice Guy the second time around.”

Waters thumbed through the pages of the London newspaper, ignoring the topless pinup on page three. He was concentrating on the birdwatcher’s photographs that had made the first and second page of the national newspaper under the headline: “Death Crash of Fighter—Farmers Live in Fear.” He threw the paper down. “No one was
killed
,” he snapped at the paper, then picked up the phone and called Childs.

The English group captain listened to Waters and agreed that the birdwatcher would probably be delighted to meet the crew he had photographed ejecting, hung up and called the president of the Suffolk Birdwatchers Club. He placed a second call to Anglia TV.

Later that afternoon he ushered Brian Philips into Waters’ office. Philips was a tall and gangly man who kept bobbing his head when he talked, reminding Waters of a stooped whooping crane with two cameras hung around its neck. The three men then drove out to the hangar where
the pieces of the wreckage were being collected and examined. Bull Morgan and Doc Landis were already waiting for them, and Philips was delighted as he shot roll after roll of film. When Philips seemed satisfied with the pictures he had taken, Waters rummaged through the wreckage until he found the actuator valve he was looking for. He and Philips then squatted on the floor while the wing commander explained how the valve had malfunctioned and how Bull Morgan had used the Phantom’s rudder to guide the dying aircraft to the left away from the village.

After the pictures and a television interview with the birdwatcher, public opinion swung in favor of the wing. A few of the older citizens even went on record that they were glad to have neighbors like the 45th, men who would stay with an aircraft to guide it away from their village. Sir David Childs was a bloody genius. But the next time…

The Maintenance problem lent itself to no PR deal. After investigations were completed, slipshod maintenance was found the primary cause in both crashes. When Waters asked Colonel Leason to come into his office the DM had no illusions why he was there and fully expected Waters to fire him on the spot. He had seen other DMs replaced for much less.

“Tell me,” Waters said, “why Maintenance can’t hack it.”

“Colonel Waters,” Leason began, “I’ve been playing a survival game. Took the easy way out…I mean, Colonel Morris was only interested in flying the exact number of hours headquarters allocated to us each calendar quarter. As long as we kept on schedule and maintained the time line he stayed off our backs. Since he cut back on the number of demanding missions the crews were flying, we got out of the habit of keeping the birds fully tweaked—”

“History, Leason. I asked why Maintenance can’t hack it
now.
All you’ve done is told me why you were screwing off under Morris.”

“Given a chance, sir, we can do our job.” Given incentive was more like it, Waters thought. “How long will it take you to get the birds back in shape?”

“If we have to fly the time line and the required amount of night sorties, at least six months—”

“I’m thinking six weeks.”

“Impossible—”

“Too bad. There’s a brace of lieutenant colonels in your organization who are about to get a chance to prove you wrong. Am I clear?”

“Are you giving me a second chance?”

“Depends. I don’t give a damn about flying out the hours headquarters has given us. I want productive training sorties for my crews so they have a chance to practice tactics and learn something. They can’t do that with sick birds. Also, they won’t get productive sorties by sky-hooking at night. All the ranges close at dark and there’s not much else they can do at night, so starting tomorrow we’re going on a flying schedule in the day and a fix-’em schedule at night. There will be no flying on weekends for the next month. You’ll have all the birds to work on for twelve hours a day and over the weekends. You’ve got six weeks to have the fleet in top-notch condition or…let’s just say you’ll freeze your ass, or boil it, where you’ll be going for your last tour in this Air Force.”

“Colonel Waters, I don’t know if you’re giving me enough time but I guarantee to kick some ass—”

“Never mind the talk, just do it,” Waters said, and dismissed him. Sundown, Waters thought. I’m turning into a Sundown Cunningham. Well, so be it. When you haven’t got time, fear can work its wonders. He glanced at his watch. He was going to Mildenhall to meet Tom Gomez, his new deputy for Operations.

An hour later Waters, Sara and Chief Pullman met the Gomezes as they came into the terminal with their two teenage daughters and Bill Carroll in tow. On the way to Stonewood Waters summarized the status of the wing.

Tom stared at the passing countryside, then said, “Seems we’re in big trouble, Muddy. I’ve had the analysts in the Watch Center looking at the situation in the Gulf since I last talked to you…Bill, this is really your area. You want to tell Muddy the bad news?”

Lieutenant Carroll nodded. “It’s a mess, for sure, sir. Let me find out what information wing Intel has and I’ll
get back to you. I can tell you now, though, we’re going to have to do something about the crazies down there. It’s getting real bad.”

4 January: 1325 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 1625 hours, Moscow, USSR

The mist escaping from the steam rooms rose above the icy-cold waters of the pool and drifted up past the horseshoe-shaped balcony to break against the hard cold of the bathhouse’s skylight. During the summer the chains that worked the elaborate bronze fittings of the glass panes in the skylight would be pulled and swing open. But the Moscow winter had frozen them shut. The General Secretary swung his legs off the massage table in one of the large curtained alcoves that lined the balcony and tugged a soft white turkish bathrobe across his broad shoulders. He stared down at his body and decided that his belly would soon match his shoulders. Too bad, he thought. Once his body had narrowed to a slim waist and taut stomach. The poundings of a masseur could only delay the inevitable.

Although he was one of the three most powerful men on earth, the General Secretary liked to use the Royal Banya, a carefully preserved leftover from the days of the czar. The stern economies of Lenin, the purges and disruption of the Stalin years and the excesses of the Brezhnev regime had not reached the bathhouse, which still reflected the glory days of its origin more than one hundred years ago. And the news that the General Secretary preferred a public bath had been carefully leaked, adding to his considerable popularity, even though the Royal Banya was not a place that the average Russian male would be allowed to use even if he could find it.

The walking tree stump of a man who served as the General Secretary’s personal servant, bodyguard and court jester stuck his head through the heavy curtains. “Comrade Rafik Ulyanoff wants to see you. Claims that he has pressing business. Politburo business no doubt.”