Turk listened as Ginella checked in with the AWACS, getting a picture of the situation over the country.
She was an odd case — professional to the point of cold indifference toward him in the squadron room, outrageously passionate in bed.
It confused the hell out of him.
Remembering Grizzly’s tales of tanker woe, Turk approached the boom gently, easing in at a crawl. At any second he expected the boomer to squawk at him about how slow he was going. But all he got was an attaboy and a solid clunk as the probe was shoved into the nose of the Hog.
He held the aircraft steady as the JP–8 sloshed in. The cockpit filled with the heady scent of escaping kerosene. Turk tried to relax his shoulder and arm muscles, afraid that any twitch would jerk him off the straw. By the time the boomer called over to tell him to disconnect, his arms had cramped.
“Copy that. Thanks.”
Turk slipped downward, dropping through several dozen feet before banking right and moving out and away from the tanker. The radio whispered hints of distant missions; it was a busy night over Libya, the allies keeping pressure on the government as the rebels continued with their offensive.
Grizzly had already tanked and was waiting for him.
“You did good, Turk,” said the other pilot. “Gonna make a real Hog driver out of you yet.”
“I’m getting there.”
“You gotta work on your grunts.” Grizzly made a noise somewhat similar to the sound of a rooting hog. His voice lost an octave and became something a caveman would have been proud of. “Real Hog driver talk like this.”
“All right, you two, knock it off,” said Ginella. “Let’s look sharp and keep our comments to business. Turk, how are your eyes?”
“I’m good.”
“There’s been no sign of our package south,” she added. “Let’s get there. You know the drill.”
Thirty minutes later the four Hogs approached an arbitrary point in the sky where they had been assigned to loiter. The other half of Shooter Squadron was to the southwest about seventy miles. The aircraft were flying at roughly 30,000 feet, high enough so they couldn’t be seen or heard in the dark night sky.
The American planes were part of a massive search and rescue operation. Dozens of aircraft were strung out across the country, ready. All they needed was a downed pilot.
The wreck had been located in a ravine twenty miles south. But the pilot’s locator beacon and radio had not been detected. Ground forces were conducting a search near the plane and in an area where computer simulations showed the man might have parachuted. Army Special Forces units had been inserted just after dusk, and had made contact with some rebels in the area who were helping with the search.
Turk didn’t have a lot of experience with rescue operations, but it took little more than common sense to realize that if the pilot hadn’t radioed in by now, the odds of finding him alive were extremely slim. But no one in the air wanted to mention that. It was too easy to put yourself in the downed man’s place — you didn’t want to think of giving up.
An hour passed. The other half of Shooter Squadron called it a night and headed home. Ginella led her group farther south, orbiting over two different spec op detachments.
Adrenaline drained, Turk found staying alert extremely difficult. He stretched his legs, rocked his shoulders back and forth — it was a constant battle, far more difficult than actually flying the plane.
One of the ground units reported that they were following a lead from the rebel guerrillas; the information was passed back down the line to the squadron. Turk felt his pulse jump. But when the lead failed to pan out, he found it even harder to keep his edge.
With dawn approaching, Ginella decided they would refuel so their patrol could be extended if needed. She split the group in two so they could continue to provide coverage. Grizzly and Turk went north to the tanker track while she and her wingman stayed south.
Mostly silent during their loops, Grizzly became animated as they approached the hookup. He told Turk he had brought along an iPod and was listening to music as they flew.
“Got some old stuff I haven’t heard in a while.”
The music may have been old, but Turk hadn’t heard any of it. It was country and country pop — Son Volt and Civil Wars and half a dozen other singers and groups completely off his radar.
“You gotta get out more,” laughed Grizzly when Turk confessed he’d never heard of the groups. He began filling him in, keeping the patter up all the way to the Air Force 757s.
“What do you think of G?” asked Grizzly after they had finished tanking.
“Seems OK,” said Turk as neutrally as possible.
“Real hardass sometimes. Good pilot, though. First woman commander I’ve ever had.”
“First one?”
“Probably had a female in charge of one of the schools somewhere along the way,” said Grizzly, referring to the different classes the officer would have attended. “But not, you know, like this.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Kinda different flying for a woman, you think?” said Grizzly.
It sounded somewhere between a statement and a question. Turk didn’t know how to answer it either way. His boss — Breanna Stockard — was a woman, but he wasn’t supposed to refer to Special Projects if possible, and he worried that mentioning her would inevitably point the conversation in that direction. It took him a few moments to think of something suitably neutral and bland to come back with.
“I haven’t worked with an actual squadron in a while,” he told the other pilot. “I’m pretty much a one-man shop.”
“That’s kind of cool.”
“Yeah.”
“Word is the Air Force is gonna phase us down,” said Grizzly. “Turn all the electronics in these suckers on and let them fly themselves.”
“I don’t know about that,” replied Turk.
“Probably replace us with laser jets, if not.”
Both ideas were actually plausible. A few years before, that would have sounded like science fiction or maybe fantasy. But there were in fact plans to replace the A–10 squadrons with airborne laser planes. The aircraft, modified from civilian airliners and housing high-energy weapons, could fly at a safe distance and altitude yet make attacks with pinpoint precision. It was almost guaranteed that a fleet of the laser jets, as they were called, would replace the Air Force’s small force of AC–130s in the next eighteen months.
“I think there’s a real need for people in the loop,” said Turk. “But, I don’t know.”
“I hear ya.”
“Everything’s going in the other direction,” said Turk.
“You’re part of it though, right? You’re playing with those little dart jets? Pretty soon they won’t need you either.”
Grizzly was absolutely right. He didn’t answer, though — because of his position, what would have been interpreted as a casual remark by any other person could be seen as a breach of security if he said it.
Maybe the accident would turn things back in the other direction. But it could just as easily be used as an argument against keeping a man in the loop — his being there, or being close, hadn’t stopped the Sabre from making the mistake.
The accident had grounded the Sabres, but not the rest of the UAV fleet. That in itself was statement of how important they were. Right now at least three were operating in the rescue area. Two provided a continuous infrared picture of the ground to the controllers and the team hunting for the pilot. The other was sniffing for his radio and signal beacon.