“English?”
“You are looking for Fahrenheit, Levon,” said Rubeo dryly. “Roughly 85 degrees down to 54.”
“OK. Where are we going?”
“Sicily, for starters.”
4
After a seemingly endless series of debriefs and interviews with intelligence officers and command, Turk was “released,” in the words of the German colonel who was the chief of staff to the head operations officer, General Bernard Talekson. The colonel was not particularly adept at English, but the word choice struck Turk as unfortunately appropriate. More sessions were scheduled for the next day, and they would undoubtedly be more “rigorous”—another word used by the colonel with understated precision.
Turk was surprised when he left the headquarters building that it was only early afternoon; it felt as if he had been inside forever. Buses ran in a continuous loop between the various administrative buildings and the hangar areas. He hopped one and rode over to the area where the Tigershark and Sabres were kept. This was a secure area within the base; only personnel directly related to the mission were allowed beyond the cordon set up by the Italian security police.
All of the aircraft had been taken inside the hangars. The Tigershark sat alone, parked almost dead center in the wide-open expanse of Hangar AC–84a. The Tigershark was a small aircraft — it would have fit inside the wings of an F–35. It looked even smaller inside the hangar, which had been built to shelter a C–5A cargo aircraft. So small, in fact, that even Turk wondered how he fit in the damn thing.
Chahel Ratha, one of the lead engineers on the Sabre team, was kneeling under the belly of the plane, shaking his head and mumbling to himself.
“Hey Rath, what’s up?” asked Turk.
Ratha bolted upright so quickly Turk thought he was going to jump onto the plane.
“Didn’t mean to scare you,” said Turk.
“Then you should not sneak up on peoples!” said the engineer sharply. Even though he was American — born and bred outside Chicago — Ratha spoke with an Indian accent when he was excited. He blamed this on his parents, both naturalized citizens.
“Sorry,” said Turk.
“Yeah, sorry, sorry. Yeah. Sorry.”
Ratha waved his hand dismissively, then walked away, heading toward one of the benches at the far side of the office.
“Jeez,” said Turk.
“Hasn’t had his herbal tea today,” said Gene Hurley, another of the maintainers. “Don’t take it personally.”
An Air Force contract worker, Hurley headed the maintenance team. Because of the advanced nature of the aircraft, the technical people were a mix of regular Air Force and private workers. Hurley had actually worked in the service for over twenty years before retiring. He claimed to be doing essentially what he had always done — but now got paid twice as much.
“He’s freaking about the investigation,” said Hurley. “And on top of that, all the janitors are on strike. Toilets are backed up and there’s no one around to fix them.”
“Really?”
“Italians are always on strike.” Hurley shook his head. “Even the ones from Africa. If you gotta use the john, your best bet is hiking all the way over to the admin building. Or taking your chances behind the hangar.”
“That sucks.”
Hurley shrugged. “Third strike since we got here. I don’t know why. The service people are always changing. And they’re pretty incompetent to begin with. But at least the toilets worked.”
“I just came by to see if you guys needed me,” said Turk.
“No, we’re good for now. Maybe tomorrow after we finish benchmarking everything we’ll get down to some tests.”
“Any clue what happened?”
Hurley shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to guess,” he said. “But if I did, I would start by saying that it almost surely didn’t have anything to do with the Tigershark. But, you know — if I could guess about things, I’d be making a fortune betting on baseball.”
“I’m going to knock off. Probably go back to the hotel,” Turk told him. “You need me, hit my sat phone.”
“Sure thing.”
Turk started away.
“We’ll get it eventually, Captain,” added Hurley. “We’ll get you back in the air. Eventually.”
Eventually.
The word stuck in Turk’s consciousness as he rode the bus back toward the admin buildings. In his experience, “eventually” meant one of two things: never, and the day after never.
It was sick how quickly everything had turned sour. By all rights he should be celebrating right now — he had kicked ass and shot down four enemy aircraft in quick succession.
Four. He was still tingling about it.
Or should be. He could hardly even think about it.
The shoot-downs had been almost entirely glossed over in the debriefs. All anyone wanted to know about was the Sabre screwup.
Naturally. Stinking robot planes were the curse of the world. UAVs were taking over military aviation. The Predator, Reaper, Global Hawk, Flighthawks, now the Sabres — in four or five years there wouldn’t be a manned combat plane in the sky.
The Tigershark was supposed to show that man was still needed. He was supposed to show that man was still needed.
And this accident showed…
Nothing, as far as Turk was concerned. Maybe it would demonstrate why UAVs were not to be trusted, but somehow he didn’t think that was going to happen. There was too much momentum, and too much money, for that to happen.
The bus stopped near the buildings used by the Italian base hosts, pausing for a few minutes because it was slightly ahead of schedule. Feeling antsy, Turk decided to get off and walk over to the lot where he had parked his car. It was a decent walk — about twenty minutes if he didn’t dally too much — but it was just the sort of thing he needed to clear his head.
“Ciao,” he told the driver, pretty much exhausting his store of Italian as he clambered down the steps.
They were miles from the sea, but the air was heavy with it today. The sun peeked in and out of the clouds, keeping the temperature pleasant. Sicily could be brutally hot, even in March.
Turk cut through the maze of admin buildings, zigging toward the lot. As he did, he heard something he’d rarely if ever heard on a military air base before — the sound of children playing. Curious, he took a sharp right between a pair of buildings and found himself at the back of a building used as a day care center by the Italian staff. A low chain-link fence separated a paved play area from the roadway.
A group of ten-year-olds playing a vigorous game of soccer caught Turk’s eye and he stopped to watch. The kids were good. He had played soccer himself through high school, making all-county at midfield. He admired the way the kids handled the ball, able to move up not only through a line of defenders but across dips and cracks in the pavement without tripping or looking down at the ball.
Suddenly, the ball shot over the fence. Turk leapt up and grabbed it, goalkeeper style, as it was about to sail over his head. He hammed it up, clutching the ball to his chest and then waving it, as if he’d just caught a penalty kick at the World Cup.
The kids stared at him. There wasn’t so much as a half smile among them.
“Here ya go,” he yelled, tossing it back.
The player closest to it ran over, tapped it up with his knee, then headed it back over the fence. This was a challenge Turk couldn’t turn down — he met it with his forehead, bouncing it back.
He was out of practice — the ball sailed far to the left rather than going back in the direction of the kid who had butted it to him. Another child caught it on his chest, let it drop and then booted a missile.