Wraith (16 page)

357th Fighter Squadron

Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona

12 March 2003

Oso sat at his desk staring at the boxes on his student's checkride form. There were only two choices: Qualified or Unqualified. He rubbed his temples and replayed the flight in his mind. The kid, whose nickname had been Sidearm ever since his first attempt to fire a rocket from the Warthog, had come a long way during the A-10 training program. Still, he had made a critical error during his first attack run.

Oso could have ended the flight right then—he could have flunked the kid and sent him back to the drawing board—but he had the leeway to offer Sidearm a second chance, and the young pilot hadn't wasted the opportunity. Sidearm had flown the rest of the checkride well enough to graduate from the program.

If Oso allowed him to.

The senior students called him the Tucson Terminator. They would never say it to his face, but he had overheard them in the squadron bar. They were all terrified of flying with him, and he hated it. But what could he do? What if he let another Brent Collins slip through the program? If he ended a struggling student's fighter career now, maybe it would save that student's life.

A week before, Torch, the commander of the operations group that included two A-10 training squadrons and one operational squadron, had called Oso into his office. The normally soft-spoken leader had actually bellowed. Oso now held the group record for failing the most students in a single year. According to Torch, he was single-handedly crippling the A-10 pilot pipeline.

Torch had issued an ultimatum. A year after allowing Oso into the 357th Dragons as an instructor, he considered his debt to Redeye paid. Oso no longer enjoyed any protection. If he failed another student without exceptionally good cause, Torch would ground him. Permanently.

Oso looked down at the checkride form again. He tried to tell himself that Sidearm was not Brent Collins, that he had the capacity to learn and grow as a pilot, that one mistake on a checkride was not cause enough to end the kid's A-10 career, or his. He placed an
X
in the Qualified box. Even as he did, a nagging question lingered in his mind. Was this really the right thing to do?

A great shadow fell across Oso's desk. “Aren't you done yet?”

The mammoth form of Ronald “Tank” Tesler filled his doorway, blocking out the light from the hallway. Tank was one of the few people in the Air Force whose call sign matched his physical form. Whenever Oso thought about it, he couldn't come up with a more suitable name. “Yeah,” said Oso, signing the form. “I'm finished.”

“Good. We have a meeting to get to.”

“What meeting?”

“Officially? It's some mandatory thing about personal finance,” Tank said with a hint of skepticism. “But I don't buy it. This meeting popped up completely out of the blue, and Torch just canceled the rest of the day's flying so that every instructor in both training squadrons can attend.

*   *   *

By the time Oso and Tank entered the small auditorium at the 358th Lobos—the other A-10 training squadron—it was already packed with instructor pilots. Oso guessed that the combined volume of experience in the room was well over fifty thousand flight hours. He and Tank claimed seats at the back, but their rear ends had barely hit the cheap upholstery before the sergeant guarding the door let out a sharp “Room, tench-hut!”

Everyone snapped to attention. The operations group commander entered the room and walked down the center aisle.

“Take your seats, folks,” said Torch, smiling at the pilots' bewildered expressions. “I guess I'm the last person you expected to see at a briefing from the finance office. I apologize for the subterfuge, but we couldn't publish the real reason for this meeting on the unclassified net. Lights.”

Someone doused the lights and flipped on a projector. The colonel pushed a button on his remote and a map of the Persian Gulf states flashed up on the screen. The briefing's true purpose began to register among the pilots. A murmur swept through the room. Tank elbowed Oso and whispered, “Told you.”

“Things are heating up in Iraq,” said Torch, “and it doesn't look like POTUS is going to take it anymore. CENTCOM has tasked Tucson's own 354th Bulldogs to join New Orleans in Kuwait and set up for a potential conflict. The 190th from Boise is on the rotation schedule to relieve New Orleans, but when they arrive, New Orleans isn't really going home. They'll quietly reposition to King Khalid Air Base in Saudi Arabia. In this way, we hope to keep the true size of the force under wraps.” The colonel flipped to the next slide. It was a list of tail numbers from the two training squadrons, collectively known as the schoolhouse—three jets from the Lobos and three from the Dragons.

Oso could feel the intensity in the room building. They all knew what was coming.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I'll get right to the point. CENTCOM is worried that the current theater assets won't be able to cover a full-scale conflict in Iraq. They're asking for our help. We've already committed these six tail numbers from the training squadrons to plus-up the force in Kuwait, but that's only half the equation. These jets need pilots, three each to maintain an alert schedule. The brass has tasked us to provide eighteen instructors from the schoolhouse.”

Another ripple of excited chatter passed through the crowd. “Ahem.” Torch cleared his throat to quiet the room. “I know that many of you came here because this assignment was supposed to afford you more time at home, but we are warriors first and the call to battle has been raised. For better or worse, I have a week to put together a detachment and get them over to the desert. I'm looking for eighteen volunteers.”

There was no pregnant pause. There was no awkward silence waiting for the first hand to go up. There was no hesitation at all. Thirty-two pilots raised their hands in unison.

The next morning, Oso stood outside the door to Torch's office. He hadn't been told why he was summoned, but he knew it must have something to do with the upcoming deployment. He took a deep breath and knocked.

“Come in.”

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

“Yeah, I see you volunteered for the Kuwait deployment”—the commander rubbed his eyes wearily—“along with everyone else in the group.”

“Yes, sir.”

Torch did not seem to notice the anticipation in Oso's reply. “The squadron commanders and I were up all night trying to solve this mess,” he said, stifling a yawn. “Since we have so many volunteers, we finally decided the only fair way to award the slots would be to base it on performance on the strafing and bombing range.” He looked up at Oso with a deadpan expression. “Shockingly, it appears from the numbers that you're the best shooter we've got. You are the number one pick.”

The news sounded good, but Torch did not look happy. After a year at the schoolhouse, Oso still could not read his boss. “Thank you, sir?”

“Don't thank me yet, Mr. Terminator. You may be good on the range, but I'm not sure you're ready to be back in the game. Lieutenant Colonel Keys from the Lobos will be the detachment commander, but as the group commander, I get the final say on his crew. And your track record with our students doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling that you won't freeze up like you did back in Europe.”

Torch sat back in his chair and folded his hands. “You blame yourself for that kid's death in Germany.”

Oso did not answer. He could not decide whether it was a question, or an accusation.

Torch kept going. “Here's the thing, though. I flew with Collins, too, as did several of my instructors here at the schoolhouse. Sure, he struggled, but he flew well enough to pass the program. Do you doubt my expert opinion in that matter?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. Collins knew his own abilities better than any of us. He knew he was struggling, more than we did. Yet he chose to step into that aircraft one last time.” Torch softened his voice, if only a touch. “You can't take on the burden of saving every young fighter pilot from themselves, Oso. In the end, it's their choice, not yours.”

Oso didn't like being psychoanalyzed, but he nodded and told Torch what he thought he wanted to hear. “I get that now, sir.”

Torch cocked his head to one side and frowned. “Do you?” His voice was hard again. “Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to look you in the eye and ask you if you're ready to go to combat—if you can translate your flying skills into a combat victory, even if it means losing another young pilot under your command. I realize right now that you're already planning to give me some form of an affirmative. But the words you choose won't really matter. I'll get my answer from your eyes.”

The commander stood and leaned across his desk, his eyes searching Oso's. “Well, what's it going to be, Major? Are you ready for combat?”

“Yes, sir.”

Torch continued to search Oso's eyes for a moment longer, and seemed to find an answer there. Then he sat down again and silently crossed his arms, leaving Oso to wonder what that answer was.

Finally Torch nodded. “You leave in five days. Don't make me regret this.”

Specter Blue

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio

14 March 2003

The Dream Catcher team would receive no awards. They would get no medals. In fact, they would get no recognition at all, save a few pats on the back. Nonetheless, what they had achieved was unbelievable. One of the Comm Twins even claimed that it was some sort of record, though no one could pin down a precedent for comparison.

The group had returned to Wright-Patterson with grim determination after the failure at Romeo Seven. No one slept more than five hours at a time for the first month; they couldn't even if they'd wanted to. The goal before them loomed too large and the pieces of the solution fit together too easily, one after the other. In ten weeks, not only had they reengineered Dream Catcher, they had remanufactured her. Like a phoenix from the ashes, their new craft rose almost of its own accord.

Danny experienced déjà vu as he led the group across the same hangar floor to the same temporary enclosure. “Once again, sir, may I present Dream Catcher,” he said unceremoniously.

Walker eyed the new product suspiciously, walking around its perimeter and slowly bobbing up and down as he examined it from above and below. “It looks the same.”

“That's the idea,” Danny replied. “Though she's a little bigger now. We had to increase the central height by more than a foot to accommodate a pilot. Consequently we had to lengthen and widen her by a few inches as well.”

“Mm-hmm,” grunted Walker, showing little interest in Danny's reply. “Where's the hatch?”

“You mean the PEP?”

“The what?”

“The PEP, sir; it stands for ‘pilot entry point.'”

“You can give it whatever fancy acronym you want, Sharp, it's still the hatch.”

Danny smiled despite the rebuke. Annoying the colonel had become sort of a hobby.

“Well, pop it open, Captain. I want to see inside.”

Danny nodded to Scott, who punched a few keys on a laptop sitting on an equipment cart. There was a sharp hiss and vapor rose from underneath the small craft. A piece of the lower fuselage slowly dropped down.

Walker ducked between the two cushioned pedestals that supported the aircraft and stuck his crew-cut head into the hole.

“As you can see, it's a tight fit,” said Danny, “even more for you, sir, since it was designed for someone whose shoulders aren't quite as broad.”

“Don't hit on me, Captain. Just tell me what I'm looking at.”

“Yes, sir. The pilot will lie prone. The PEP—I mean, the
hatch
—is approximately where his thighs will be. In front you'll see a pad that supports his chest, with molded forearm rests on either side. At the ends of the forearm rests are the controls—throttles on the left and control stick on the right. Additionally there is a data entry panel set into the slope of the interior wall to the left of the throttles. It has a compact keyboard and trackball.”

Walker squeezed himself deeper into the tiny cockpit. “How does the pilot see to fly?”

“Installing windshields presented numerous technical issues, so we simply chose not to,” said Danny. “Instead, you have a one-hundred-and-twenty-degree viewscreen, connected to Dream Catcher's various cameras and sensors. If you look forward you'll see me waving at you.”

“Something's wrong, Sharp. You're black-and-white.”

“Actually, that is by design,” interjected Scott. “What you see is a grayscale, infrared-enhanced image.” He waved to another engineer. With a loud
click
, the whole hangar went dark.

“You'll notice that we cut the lights, sir,” said Danny, “but your image has hardly changed. The beauty of this enhanced display is that it doesn't matter whether you're operating in daylight or darkness; the computer optimizes the view for the pilot.”

The hangar lights flickered back on and several awkward moments passed as Walker backed his large frame out of the craft. Finally he stood and straightened his uniform. “Anything else, gentlemen?”

“There's also a display mode for Dream Catcher's radio frequency sensors—RF for short,” offered Danny. “It shows the pilot radio wave energy across the spectrum. The color is—”

“I'm
good
on the displays, Sharp. Is there anything
else
?” The colonel and his scowl both leaned in to the question.

Danny and Scott looked at one another and then turned back at the colonel with blank expressions.

“The
recovery system
, Sharp. What
changes
did you make to the
recovery system
?”

Danny winced. He and Scott had conspired to avoid mentioning the new recovery system, hoping that the colonel would let it pass. There was nothing the team could do about it anyway.

He took in a deep breath and spoke slowly, treading lightly. “Dream Catcher is bigger now, sir. Consequently, we had to shorten up the recovery arm to make the whole thing fit into the bomb bay. That means we had to give up some of the shock absorption that was built into the original system.”

Walker took a step closer to Danny. “You mean we took a target zone that a computer couldn't hit and we made it even
smaller
for the human pilot?”

Danny nodded up at his boss. He felt very small. “Yes, sir.”

“For your sake, and his, I hope our boy is up to the task.”