A Private Little War (52 page)

Lefty saw something; he was yelled at some more. No one knew what he’d seen. Lefty was an idiot. Fine pilot, but an idiot. Jumpy. Bad eyes. He’d been Carter’s drogue man since day one on Iaxo—fifth pilot in a squadron that generally sortied in pairs—and it never seemed to bother him. Carter snuggled down deeper into his seat, ducking his chin down to his chest and breathing into the fur of his collar. He pursed his cold lips. “Lefty,” he whispered. “Lefty, Lefty, Lefty.” His radio reception was spotty. It popped and crackled in his ear.

Orders began coming through. “Roadrunner, clear to taxi. Runway B left. Splendor, Havoc—three and nine at runway B left. Three squadron shift to runway A left. Ground crews away. All clear runway C.”

Carter checked his mirror. He straightened his legs and squeezed up against his restraints, looking across the cowling and through the spinning prop before goosing the throttle and trying to rumble forward. The plane bumped and went nowhere. He was chocked. Keying his radio to the ground crew frequency, he felt a sudden sparkle in the air, an aliveness and tension that was like a fog lifting, a sudden adjustment in some global focus knob that brought everything into bright and sharp contrast.

“Roadrunner to ground. I’m chocked. Somebody pull these fuckers.”

He thought he might be hyperventilating. Or having a heart attack. “This is just one of those things,” he said to himself, aloud, and watched, wide-eyed, the swirls of waxy snow drifting and spinning across the field. The bare branches of trees like skeleton fingers on the verge. Rockwell kicking viciously with his steel-toed boots at the wheel mount of George Stork’s Fokker, Iaxo Hustler, and the remains of first squadron, Albert Wolfe and Billy Stitches, wheeling their planes, Havoc and Splendor in the Grass, into their places in the taxi order, and Vic, somewhere out there, stopped like a wound-down toy, head cocked,
one ear to the wind—paused in midstride because, as Carter knew, she’d felt it, too. A physical change in the atmosphere, like a pressure drop. Max was flagging planes, wearing a wide, gap-toothed smile. Meleuire came at a run, jinked around Roadrunner’s spinning prop at the last second, yanked the chocks, and then popped up on the other side of the fuselage, spinning the chocks on their cord. He signaled Carter to roll.

“Roadrunner taxiing, B left.”

In his ear, the radio bellowed with the clear voice of the ground controllers, ordering all fighters to lift immediately. They were to scramble and re-form, north by north, five miles clear.

The klaxon, the ground emergency horn, added its voice.

And Carter was already moving when he heard Lefty get shot.

HOT-3:
Oh God. Oh…

HOT-2:
Uh, control? We have… There’s ground fire here.

HOT-3:
[Unintelligible] (Laughing)

HOT-1:
Iaxo Ops, ground fire. Ground fire.

OPS:
All fighters, pull out to far beacon at ceiling.

HOT-3:
Motherfucker… [Unintelligible]… coming (hard right?)

HOT-2:
Lefty, repeat. Are you hit?

OPS:
A flight, this is Ops. Time to target?

HOT-4:
Ops, A flight. Target or…

OPS:
The bridge, Jack. How far?

HOT-4:
Climbing to it now. Three minutes.

Carter didn’t love Lefty Berthold. He didn’t even like him in any particular, specific way. Funny that on a planet that hosted maybe a couple thousand humans all told—in a place that encompassed about fifty—there were still people he hardly knew and didn’t much care to. He had flown with Lefty, yes. Fought beside him inasmuch as anyone did anyone when alone in a bathtub at ten thousand feet. And there was, as he understood it, supposed to be this profound and unspoken, unbreakable
bond between men who were at war together, a sense that, in having had the shared experience of killing and facing death together, they were bound by some deep and communal connection that would link them for all their given days.

It was a job. Some people he liked. Some he didn’t.

He gave Roadrunner some throttle. He wasn’t waiting for any fucking flag. “Lifting now,” he said, radio tuned to a wing frequency. He’d already squeezed through between Wolfe’s Havoc and Billy’s Splendor in the Grass. “Keep up. Stay tight. Let’s go get some.”

Across the field, B strip, planes were shuffling around one another like bad dancers, trying to find a clear taxi. The system had broken down completely. There was no order, just a deep need to be in the air and doing some damage. There was a bomb dolly lying half on the A strip apron, and he jigged around it until he felt his right wheel biting stubble. Once past it, he was in the clear. Wolfe and Billy would have to come single file. He saw another plane wobble into the air, another Camel that he thought was probably Tommy Hill. Just barely made it airborne, the fool. Carter punched his throttle forward and felt the new engine cycle up and begin to roar.

He hardly knew Lefty, save that he lived two tents down the line from him and Fenn, loved eggs, cut hair for some of the men (though not for Carter), had fought a day or two or ten ago with Lambert from the ground crew, had once bragged of laying Shun Le Harper, one of the controllers, which was a complete lie because Shun Le didn’t even talk to pilots, let alone whatever else. Davey Rice had called Lefty on it, Carter remembered, during one of the slow seasons when there was nowhere to go and nothing to do but talk shit and scrounge for excitement.

“That one,” Davey had said, meaning Shun Le, “doesn’t even open her mouth to pilots, let alone her legs.”

“Not to you, maybe,” Lefty had said.

“Not to anyone,” Davey shouted. “Motherfucker, I bet you got
Shun Le Pussy
written on your fucking hand.” And everyone had laughed, even Lefty, because damn if that wasn’t funny no matter what the truth was.

In the air, Carter checked his six, his twelve, and then his thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen, too, just for good measure. He would do a lazy
circle, collect his wing, then go fuck some shit up. This was the new plan. His.

Lefty Berthold had once played out a lucky streak at the poker table for almost twelve hours until he fell asleep on his winnings and woke with shell casings and boot laces and coins from a dozen worlds stuck to his face. He had a family back home (though Carter didn’t know where home was for him, exactly) who sometimes gave him problems and sometimes didn’t. Lefty’d hurt himself once, drunkenly picking a fight with a horse. Lefty’d asked him once about Vic, and Carter’d told him to shut up. Lefty had an actual first name. Carter thought it might’ve been Hugo. He didn’t know the man at all.

And now he loved him. Now he was going to risk his life saving him, helping him, avenging him, because Lefty was shot and being shot was special and different and, if he
did
die, Carter would mourn him like they’d been lovers or brothers—already, he felt rage and grief packing up like a hot ball in his chest.

That bond, that mystical whatever that soldiers and pilots were supposed to have? Carter knew it only meant that they would die for one another. But until the moment of dying came, it didn’t really mean much of anything at all.

HOT-2:
Lefty?

HOT-1:
Tower, this is Jackrabbit. Bad Dog inbound is showing smoke.

TWR:
Copy that, Jackrabbit.

TWR:
Bad Dog, this is tower control. Are you damaged?

HOT-3:
[Laughing]

HOT-2:
I see that smoke. Coming back…

RAM:
[Increasing engine noise. Stickshaker, indicating a hard climb]

HOT-2:
Control, more ground fire.

OPS:
Do you have a location on that ground fire?

TWR:
Bad Dog, respond.

HOT-2:
Right below and behind me. Um…

RAM:
[Two clicks, rapid decrease in engine noise]

HOT-2:
Jesus, fucking accurate, too. Multiple contacts. All over the bad side of the river here.

RAM:
[Engine noise increasing. Two clicks—similar to flaps locking.]

HOT-2:
Taking fire.

HOT-1:
What the hell—

HOT-4:
Ops, A flight. Two minutes. A.O. in sight.

HOT-1:
Ops, I have… Is anyone else seeing this?

HOT-4:
Jesus…

HOT-4:
Ops, permission to engage immediately.

HOT-3:
Tower, Bad Dog. I’m hit. I’m hit.

OPS:
Negative, A flight. Climb and hold.

HOT-3:
Oh mother…

TWR:
Copy, Bad Dog. Come around to two-eight-three at any altitude. Bring it home.

HOT-3:
Bleeding.

HOT-1:
Ops, I’m seeing what looks like… I don’t know. Orbital flares?

HOT-2:
Lefty? Speak, pal. What’s happening?

HOT-3:
[Laughing]

HOT-3:
[Unintelligible]… Fucking shot. I can’t…

HOT-1:
Insertion flares, maybe.

TWR:
Bad Dog, control. Make any return heading, any altitude. Find a—

OPS:
Bad Dog, repeat.

HOT-2:
Repeat, Lefty. Come on, man.

HOT-3:
Oh God. I’m gonna die.

Porter didn’t see them—the flares. Later, he would say he had, but he hadn’t. He would sit with Emile Hardman in the ugly, rancid remains of the mess and, over coffee that was cold before they poured it, describe the beautiful, arcing comets of light. How they’d lit like fireworks, dragging long tails of fire across the cloud-stricken bowl of the sky. How, in fact, they’d almost seemed to
boil
the clouds as they passed through them—punching holes like wounds into the clotted masses of wet, gray banks and then sizzled along their bellies like worms made of fire.