A Private Little War (51 page)

And Diane was laughing. She was laughing at Shun Le because she knew there was no one left to file a complaint to. She’d overheard enough from the pilots—in particular the ones who never even noticed she was there; the ones who, after two years, didn’t even know her name. She’d listened to them talk. She’d watched the Ted-and-Eddie show often enough and had placed many of Eddie’s early-morning calls on the secure uplink. Maybe she hadn’t always switched her channel as quickly as she ought to. Maybe she knew more than anyone thought she did. Like she knew for sure that no one was going to listen to any harassment complaint from little Miss Shun Le Harper, who was always finding something to scowl about anyhow. To make faces at.

So Diane laughed. She also thought it was funny because she’d never heard Shun Le say “shit” before. So proper, that one. So quiet, most of the time.

Ted was saying her name. Diane shook her head.

“Hold him!” Ted snapped, meaning Jimmy, who’d never done anything mean to anybody. Who’d never said a cross word. And for an instant, Diane thought about kicking Ted instead.

“No way,” she said back. “Everyone stop yelling right
now
!”

Ted’s face was mottled. There was a crust of something at the corner of his mouth that looked like blood. His hair was mussed. Like a boy, like an idiot, he’d been out on the field, running around and playing with the airplanes when he should’ve been inside coordinating. Leading. That was his job. He smelled of cold and exhaust and fuel.
Diane had no doubt he’d been getting in everyone’s way, trying to help but doing just the opposite. Like a boy.

She’d told him before that he shouldn’t be flying anymore. That there was no need. And she could do that, being lead controller. She felt as though she was able to say things to Ted that no one else could—that it was her place to point out things that, maybe, he wasn’t in a position to notice.

He’d listened to her for a while, but then had stopped. Said who was she to tell him what was needed?

Lead controller
, she’d told him.
That’s who.

You don’t know what’s needed
, he’d said.
You don’t understand.

Oh yes, I do.

He’d been carrying one of the radio handsets outside with him, Ted had. Diane knew that for a fact. She also happened to know that he slept with it in his hand, curled into his fist, his fist on his chest, with the rubber whip antennae sticking up like a lily in the hand of a corpse. Every sound it made, his eyes would snap open like window shades. She’d watched this. She was the one who’d change out the handset batteries in the middle of the night, when it was quiet, so that Ted would never notice. For two hours, sometimes three, she’d leave the fresh batteries out. She’d sit beside him, bouncing them in her palm. It was the only real sleep Ted ever got.

Lead controller, that’s who.

Ted was pulling Jimmy’s headphones on. Ted was crouching to Jimmy’s microphone. His eyes were wild in his head. Bloodshot and watering from the cold and the sudden sour, stinging snow that’d blown up.

Shun Le was slapping her hand on the flat shelf of the radio console—something she did when she was looking for attention.

Jimmy was scrambling to his feet.

Jimmy was grabbing Shun Le for leverage and hauling himself up.

Shun Le was pushing him off.

Diane was standing, waiting to see what would happen next. The pilots babbled in her ear. Her breath was coming low and in grunts.

Jimmy—who’d never done a cruel thing, who’d never raised his voice, who’d never been anything but cordial and sometimes had coffee or tea with Diane when she was coming off the night shift and he was
coming on—raised a hand. Jimmy made a fist and punched Ted in the back. He put all his weight behind it.

Jimmy might just as well have punched a rock.

Diane smiled, her lips parted slightly, tongue touching the tips of her front teeth.

Ted was suddenly calm. Ted was suddenly in control. His eyes were still bloodshot. He still looked like death walking. But there was some weight in him now. A presence that Diane recognized but couldn’t put a name to. He turned in the chair.

You don’t understand.

Oh yes, I do.

“Hit him…,” Diane hissed under her breath, too quietly for anyone else to hear. “Hit him…”

HOT-2:
Fenn, is your radio down? I’m getting nothing from the controllers…

There was an order, a method for getting men and airplanes off the ground and into the air. There had been plans—written down somewhere, studied, lost, found, memorized, practiced, debated over. There were words to be intoned and replies to be made, pious gestures and motions to go through, movements to make. Like anything important, it all seemed rote and pointless in those hours and days and years when none of it had been necessary; when a man and his plane might leisurely go up and come down, defying and then succumbing to gravity without schedule. And then, like anything important, in the sudden moment when the plan’s purpose became borne out by the situation for which it’d been designed, the whole thing just went completely to shit.

In his plane, Carter watched the chaos on the ground and it made him smile. All this action, this furious activity—it was exciting, was what it was. Finally, there was something to do. And it didn’t matter to him if they did it well or did it poorly. He just didn’t want to miss all the fun.

HOT-1:
Control, this is Jackrabbit. Over.

HOT-1:
Porter, come around sharp and put on some fucking altitude. Now. Lefty, you follow.

HOT-2:
Roger that, spotter. Coming around to two-four-five. Breaking.

HOT-2:
Lefty?

HOT-3:
Heard him.

RAM:
[Increasing engine noise]

RAM:
[Navigation capture chime] (possibly from HOT-1?)

HOT-1:
What the hell is that?

HOT-1:
Control, Jackrabbit. Do you copy?

HOT-4:
Fenn? A flight inbound. Is that me you’re reading?

HOT-1:
A flight, hold one.

HOT-1:
Porter, Lefty, bug out now. Come to ten thousand on any heading.

HOT-2:
Ten thousand, roger.

TWR:
Jackrabbit, this is control. Are you—

HOT-1:
’Bout fucking time…

HOT-1:
Control, I have an unidentified potential target. Off the river at—

RDO-1:
Fenn, pull them up and out immediately. Come to two-seven-zero and get back across the river at altitude. Go to ceiling.

TWR:
I have the target. Marking it as a navigation point. It’s on the ground at—

RDO-1:
I am going to OPS frequency now. Tower, scramble the fighters. Close C for takeoffs. Landings only. Emergency crews and equipment to the field.

RAM:
[More chimes, increasing engine sounds]

HOT-4:
I have three unidentified captures. Are these targets?

HOT-4:
Four now.

OPS:
A flight inbound, maintain course and heading. Rally at ten thousand, over the bridge at the third nav beacon. Box it.

HOT-4:
Roger, Ops.

RDO-3:
All fighters to ready position.

RAM:
[Sound of siren from ground]

HOT-3:
Cavalry is breaking up, Porter. See that there?

RDO-3:
Fighters in taxi. Ground crews are still on the strip. Field crews shifting. Ops, do you want them to finish loading the fighters?

HOT-2:
Yeah, come out and around, Lefty. We’ve got altitude. Just stay clear.

OPS:
No. Put ’em in the air. We’re re-forming by wing in the air at… Give them north by north, five miles clear. Form up and hold for attack orders.

RDO-3:
Copy that.

TWR:
A flight inbound hold and box at ten thousand at nav three. Jackrabbit and one-two inbound, crossing the river and going to ceiling.

RAM:
[Sound of click from HOT-3—similar to rudder maximizing]

HOT-3:
We’re going to come back and—

RAM:
[Sound of tearing]

RAM:
[Sound of stick shaking begins. Sound of solid metallic impacts]

HOT-3:
Oh God.

Carter had seen Ted taking off like a dart for the comms tent. He’d been waiting on fuel, hunched down in Roadrunner’s cockpit, sitting on his hands to keep them warm. He was listening to the radio.

Raoul came with the gas—hand pump on a dolly meant for moving file cabinets or furniture. He got a call to taxi to ready-one. He responded with a negative. “Waiting on the fuel truck, baby,” was what he’d said.

He had machine-gun rounds. Belts of them, and then extras stashed in folds behind his seat. Max was walking the stubble field, passing out bombs like Halloween candy. Carter had eleven rounds for the cannon and could’ve stood ten or twenty more. He was heavy, but unconcerned. Breathing through his mouth, he felt dizzy with anticipation and frozen by the scattered action on the field, like he was looking in on it all from outside. Like they were in a snow globe he was shaking, far beyond the concerns of the tiny people inside. He heard Fenn yelling at Porter and Porter yelling at Lefty. They were having fun. He didn’t want to miss it. He wanted to play, too.

Raoul finished with the gas, slapped Roadrunner on the flank, and moved on. Carter pulled a hand free and stuck his thumb up. He called ground control. “Ready for taxi,” he said, and got no response. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine sunbeams on his face, the smell of anything green and living. The new engine growled like something caged and sent rumbles of power jittering up through Carter’s tailbone. It made him have to pee.