Silent Enemy (5 page)
Authors: Tom Young
“We’re set, Gunfighter,” he said. “Come on up.”
The two Eagles slid into view out the right windows. Swept angles and sharp points of supersonic aircraft. Flying cutlasses. Faces of the helmeted pilots invisible behind oxygen hoses and black visors. Needlelike shapes under the wings: Sidewinders.
“Makes me feel better to see those boys,” Colman said.
“They aren’t here to do us any good,” Parson said. “They’re here to blow us away if they think we’re hijacked.”
“How you doing over there?” called the lead fighter.
“I’ve had better flights,” Parson said. Go fuck yourself.
“Roger that. Sorry to have to ask this, but can you authenticate Tango Four?”
Colman picked up a classified comms table, read across the columns and rows.
“Don’t get it wrong,” Parson said. He watched Colman run his finger down a row of code letters until he stopped on one.
“It’s Bravo,” Colman said over the interphone.
Parson leaned across the center console to double-check.
“Gunfighter, Air Evac Eight-Four,” called Parson. “Bravo.”
“That checks.”
So at least the fighters won’t open up on us yet, Parson thought. He looked out at them, watched them holding close formation, then looked past them. Dust hung in the air below the aircraft, giving that part of the sky a beige tint more like a painting than reality. A temperature inversion, he guessed, kept the dust from rising above a certain altitude. The effect created a line along the horizon like a layer of smoke.
“Anybody find anything?” he asked over interphone.
A loadmaster called from downstairs: “Negative.”
“Nothing up here, either,” came the answer from the troop compartment.
“Engineer,” Parson asked. “You guys did a thorough preflight, didn’t you?”
“We did,” said Dunne. “I’m sure there’s nothing in the wheel wells. The scanner and I both looked.”
That was good. If it were in a wheel well, they couldn’t do anything about it. No access from inside the plane. Parson decided to check in with TACC again.
“We’re negative on anything suspicious so far,” he said. “We’ll keep you advised.”
“Roger that,” the flight manager said. “Also, we have a tanker launching from Manas to refuel you. And the DO says he’ll waive crew duty day limits.”
Parson rolled his eyes, pressed his TALK switch. “You think?” he said. He usually tried not to use sarcasm over the radio, but this was asking for it.
“Hilda out,” came the response.
Good, thought Parson. Talk to me when you’re not going to say something stupid. Sounds like things are more in control up here than they are down there.
He felt he could afford to let his guest come back upstairs. “Cargo,” Parson said, “what’s Sergeant Major Gold doing now?”
“She’s talking to that Afghani guy.”
“When she finishes, tell her she can come up here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Perhaps her presence would keep his thinking clear. It certainly had four years ago. Back then, at a moment when rage had overcome his reason, he’d nearly killed a valuable Taliban prisoner. Gold had prevented it, by a swift blow to Parson’s cheek with the stock of her weapon. Getting your ass kicked by a girl wasn’t something you bragged about, but it had kept him focused on the mission.
When the flight deck door slid open, Gold sat at the nav table and put on the headset Dunne had loaned her.
“Thanks for coming, Sergeant Major,” Parson said.
Gold leaned forward and patted the headrest of Parson’s seat. She didn’t actually touch him, just his crew station. But it seemed to say what Parson wanted to hear:
You were there for me, sir. I was there for you. If things turn bad, we can do this again.
You were there for me, sir. I was there for you. If things turn bad, we can do this again.
She pulled up the hot mike switch on her comm panel and asked, “Any new info?”
“Negative,” Parson said. “Except that we have company.”
Gold looked out the windows at the F-15s. Her face darkened, and Parson knew she understood their real purpose.
He scanned his instruments, tried to think. No warning lights or OFF flags. Mach zero-point-six-two. Vertical speed: zero. Flight level: three-four-zero. More than six miles above the earth, where the temperatures are always below freezing. Getting a little cold inside, too. Parson hated to be cold.
“Engineer,” he said, “can you throw another log on the fire?”
Dunne twisted a rheostat on his panel toward HOT. Parson nodded to him in thanks. Think about the crew, Parson told himself. Some of them are pretty young and haven’t seen much action. They could be letting their imaginations run away with them.
“Crew,” Parson said, “this could turn into a long day. I want everybody to eat at least a little something for lunch. Stay hydrated, too. We don’t know how long we’re going to be up here now, and I need all of you at the top of your game.”
Parson knew he’d better be at the top of his own game, too. Everybody would expect him to know what to do, to have a plan. Always, no matter what. Up until now, he had been a crew member, responsible for knowing his job and providing good suggestions to the aircraft commander. Now he was in charge. He’d once heard someone say,
To command is to serve.
He couldn’t remember where that quote came from, but he felt its truth. Yes, he was the leader; people answered to him. But he answered for their fates. If you didn’t want this burden, he told himself, you shouldn’t have asked for it.
To command is to serve.
He couldn’t remember where that quote came from, but he felt its truth. Yes, he was the leader; people answered to him. But he answered for their fates. If you didn’t want this burden, he told himself, you shouldn’t have asked for it.
“Engineer’s going off headset,” Dunne said. “I’ll bring us some stuff out of the galley.”
Dunne returned with a six-pack of Pepsi, cans lettered in English and Arabic. From the chow hall at Balad. A jar of Spanish olives, from outside the base at Rota. Wurst and crackers from the commissary at Spangdahlem. All stops before arrival at Bagram.
Parson had no appetite at all, but he decided to set an example and follow his own order. He drew his boot knife and, with paper towels in his lap, cut a few slices of the wurst. Wiped the blade on the sleeve of his flight suit. Passed some of the meat and crackers to Gold and his crewmates.
GOLD TOOK AN OLIVE,
offered on the tip of Parson’s knife. Ate it without tasting. She watched the F-15s float alongside like Grim Reapers in solid form. Death itself, always there, never far away, only now you could see it.
offered on the tip of Parson’s knife. Ate it without tasting. She watched the F-15s float alongside like Grim Reapers in solid form. Death itself, always there, never far away, only now you could see it.
She had thought the most dangerous part of her career was over. No more translating for combat patrols, no interpreting for interrogations. She had a school to run. A way to help undo the damage from a regime that had banned learning from the time it took power in 1996 until the U.S. military blew it away in 2001. The Army, of all institutions, had introduced her to the life of the mind. Educated her in a foreign language. Funded additional courses in a culture and history so rich she could study it all her life and not learn it all.
But what had it gotten for her and her students? Fire and pain, fear and loss. More of the same if there was anything to this bomb threat.
She knew she had to change her line of thinking. Fear was like a virus. It could always find its way in, but it hit you harder if you allowed yourself to become vulnerable. And it was contagious. You’re a senior NCO, she told herself, and you’re supposed to set an example.
Parson and his men still seemed pretty focused. They were lucky they had things to do, Gold thought. Something to keep their minds from wandering. Tweaking knobs, examining charts, checking weather sheets. Their instrument panels, with yellowed lettering and round gauges covered by scratched glass, looked old enough to belong in a history museum. The engineer had some book of graphs with lines like spaghetti, and he kept running his pencil through the graphs and worrying at his calculator.
That’s what she needed: a job. When she and Major Parson had trekked through the mountains of Afghanistan, her language skill had made her a functional leader despite rank. Among the Afghans, she had been in her element while Parson, a grounded flier, was robbed of his. Now those roles were reversed, and Gold felt useless.
“Can I help with anything?” she asked.
“If there’s still coffee in the galley,” Parson said, “I could use a cup.”
“Me, too,” Dunne said. “Appreciate it.”
Waitressing wasn’t what she had in mind, but it was better than nothing. She took off her headset and went aft, down the hallway to the relief crew area. The galley had a small oven and a refrigerator. Overhead cabinet, cup dispenser. She found the coffeemaker against the galley’s back wall, poured two cups and brought them to the cockpit. She placed Dunne’s on the engineer’s table, handed Parson’s to him. When he took the cup, for an instant she saw herself reflected in his sunglasses. He expects me to be professional, she thought. Don’t let him down.
She regarded him as he sipped and spoke inaudible words into the boom mike on his headset. Beige desert flight suit, like the one he had been wearing four years ago, only this one was clean. American flag on the left shoulder. Below the flag, another little patch, one that had to be unauthorized. It showed a gauge with ranges in green, yellow, and red. The needle pointed into the red. The label said SUCKMETER. Some of these Air Force flyboys personalized their uniforms in ways you could never get away with in the Army.
So this is Major Parson’s world, she thought. His machine and crew far above the ground, nations and cultures passing underneath his wings by the hour. She had come to know him in vastly different circumstances, fleeing from the enemy during the worst blizzard Afghanistan had ever recorded. Parson saved her life with his outdoor skills and marksmanship, talents not always associated with fliers. She gathered that he’d spent a lifetime hunting, fishing, and camping. Elemental pastimes, she supposed, that helped him escape the technology filling his working hours. She wondered if he still liked to hunt after all that had happened.
Gold went back to the galley. She found a Ziploc bag filled with sugar packets, creamer, and coffee. It also contained a few tea bags. That gave her an idea for something she could do for Mahsoud and the others.
She looked around until she noticed the watercooler behind her. Gold filled the galley’s hot cup and plugged it in, scanned the knobs and switches until she found the timer for the hot cup, then turned the dial to set it for five minutes.
While she waited, she climbed halfway down the cargo compartment ladder so she could see her students. Mahsoud and Baitullah were awake; the others were asleep or unconscious.
Back at the galley, she put tea bags and sugar into two cups. Not the chai the Afghans were used to; Lipton would have to suffice. When the timer stopped, she poured the hot water. Once the tea had brewed, she took one of the cups and eased down the ladder, holding on with her other hand. The retractable ladder creaked and shifted; it occurred to Gold that if she weren’t used to jumping out of airplanes, simply descending these steps would seem dangerous.
She carried the first cup of tea to Baitullah. He smiled at her, but he looked rattled. No wonder. He was two litters away from the American sergeant who had been shouting and moaning. Now the sergeant was whispering, “I have to get out of here . . . I have to get out of here.”
Gold knew Baitullah spoke not one word of English. But to understand the sergeant’s mental state, he wouldn’t need to. Gold patted Baitullah’s shoulder and wished she could move him. But the aeromeds had him hooked up to monitors, and he was missing both feet.
After another trip up and down the ladder, Gold brought tea to Mahsoud. He had raised up on one elbow, perhaps to see better out his window. Blue sky above, but the weather had changed below. A cloud layer like rumpled linen obscured the ground completely. There was no sense of distance or perspective, as if the planet consisted of nothing but its atmosphere.
“How do you feel?” Gold asked in English.
“It hurts to—” Mahsoud looked puzzled, made a sweeping motion across his chest.
“Breathe,” Gold said.
“Yes. It hurts to breathe.” Mahsoud adjusted the cannula in his nose, took the foam cup. “Thank you,” he said. He took a sip, and Gold could tell from his expression that he wasn’t impressed. Or maybe he was just too uncomfortable to enjoy tea. He drank again, and seemed to watch the steam rise from the cup.
Gold thought about what she might do to ease his mind. Things for her were hard enough, but she could at least move around. What if you were confined to a litter with nothing to do but wonder if the end was . . . soon? Or now?
She went to the baggage pallet and found her pack. Gold considered giving Mahsoud her book of poetry, but he had already read it. Three times, that she knew of. She had another book, one about which she had once written a term paper. She’d even thought of it as a topic for some future master’s thesis.
It was a Falnama, a book of omens. Not a holy book like the Quran but something perhaps once appended to the Quran, containing Muslim lore and legends consulted for advice and predictions. Gold had a reprint of one from the Safavid dynasty, during the sixteenth century.
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