“Negative.”
Not acknowledging his hails was one thing, but not acknowledging the Osprey pilot’s was, at best, extremely unprofessional — so much so that Turk realized something must be wrong with Ginella. He was just about to try hailing her again when Li called on his frequency.
“Tigershark, this is Shooter Four. Are you in contact with Shooter One?”
“Negative, Shooter Four. I have been trying to hail her.”
“Same here. There’s got to be some sort of problem with her aircraft,” added Li. “Can you assist?”
“Stand by.”
Turk talked to Danny and the Osprey pilot, telling them that he thought the Hog was having some sort of emergency. Both assured him that the flight could get back on its own if necessary. A few moments later the flight controller came on, requesting that he help make contact with the Hog.
Turk acknowledged and changed course, accelerating to catch up quickly with the A–10. The aircraft had continued to climb, and was now at nearly 35,000 feet.
“Was Shooter One damaged in the fight?” Turk asked Li.
“She said she got a shrapnel hit but that it wasn’t much. Her last transmission said she was in good shape and going to check on the tanks.”
“Sound giddy?”
“Hard to say. You think she’s OK?”
“I’d say no. I’m guessing hypoxia.”
“Yeah. Or worse.”
Hypoxia was the medical term for lack of oxygen. There was a whole range of symptoms, the most critical in this case being loss of consciousness. Turk suspected that Ginella’s plane was flying itself. With no one at the controls, it would keep going until it crashed.
She might in fact already be dead.
He tried hailing her several times, using both her squadron frequency and the international emergency channel. A pair of F/A–18s were coming southwest from a carrier in the eastern Mediterranean, but Turk was much closer, and within a minute saw the distinctive tail of the aircraft dead ahead.
“Shooter Four, I’m coming up on her six.”
“Four acknowledges.”
Turk backed off the throttle, easing the Tigershark into position over the Hog’s right wing. He zoomed the camera covering that direction so he could look into the bubble canopy of the A–10E. At first glance there seemed to be nothing wrong beyond a few shrapnel nicks in the aircraft’s skin. But when he zoomed on Ginella, he saw her helmet slumped to the side.
Turk radioed Li and the controller, giving his position and heading, then telling them what he saw.
“She’s gotta be out of it,” he added. “Autopilot has to be flying the plane. I don’t know if we can rouse her.”
“Maybe if you buzz nearby,” suggested Li. “Maybe the buffet will wake her up.”
It was a long shot, but worth a try. Turk took a deep breath, then moved his hand forward on the simulated throttle.
Some twenty miles west, Danny Freah listened to the pilots as they attempted to rouse the Hog squadron commander. He’d heard of some similar incidents in the past, including one that had involved an A–10A that was lost over the U.S.
Any pilot flying above 12,000 or so could easily succumb to hypoxia, even in an ostensibly pressurized aircraft, if he wasn’t receiving the proper mix of oxygen, or if something otherwise impeded the body’s absorption of that oxygen.
How ironic, he thought, for a pilot to survive combat only to succumb to a run-of-the-mill problem.
“I knew his mother,” said Rubeo, who was sitting on the bench next to him.
“Who?” Danny lifted the visor on his helmet and turned to Rubeo. “Who are you talking about?”
“Neil Kharon. The man who jumped. His mother worked at Dreamland. It was before your time.”
“I’m sorry.”
Rubeo nodded.
“I was listening to a transmission,” said Danny. “One of the aircraft that was helping us is having a flight emergency. They can’t raise the pilot.”
“I see.”
“Turk thinks she lost oxygen.”
Rubeo stared at him. Danny was about to turn away when the scientist asked what type of airplane it was.
“An A–10E. One of the Hogs I mentioned earlier.”
“Have the Tigershark take it over,” suggested Rubeo.
“How?”
“Give me your com set.”
“It’s in the helmet.”
“Then give me the helmet.”
Turk pulled the Tigershark back parallel to the A–10, this time on its left side. Three swoops and Ginella had not woken.
The plane, however, had moved into a circular pattern, apparently responding to a slight shift of pressure on the controls.
“She’s going to be bingo fuel soon,” said Li, begging the question of how her own fuel was.
“I’m not sure what else we can do,” Turk said. “Maybe as she starts to run out of fuel the plane will descend. Once she’s below twelve thousand feet, she’ll regain consciousness and she can bail.”
Li didn’t answer. The odds of that scenario coming true, let alone having a good outcome, were incalculable.
“Tigershark, this is Ray Rubeo.” The transmission came from Danny’s helmet, but Rubeo’s ID flashed on the screen, the Whiplash system automatically recognizing his voice. “Are you on the line?”
“Affirmative, Dr. Rubeo.”
“You are following an A–10E. Am I correct?”
“Yes, sir. The plane is flying in a circular pattern. I’m guessing she has a very slight input on the stick because—”
“No response from the pilot?”
“Copy that. No response.”
“The A–10E is equipped with a remote suite that can be controlled from your aircraft by tuning to the proper frequency and using the coded command sequence, just as if it was Flighthawk or Sabre.”
“Yeah, roger,” said Turk. “I did some of the testing. But the pilots told me the circuitry is inactive in these planes.”
“Inactive but not nonexistent, Captain. Stand by, please. I need to consult one of my people.”
The dilemma invigorated Rubeo, giving him something to focus on other than Neil Kharon and his horrendously wasted talent and life.
The A–10E system had been adopted from one of the control setups developed for the early Flighthawks. It wasn’t quite cutting edge, but that was by design, since the Air Force specs called for a system that was both “compact and robust”—service-ese for a small but well-proven unit.
One of the primary requirements — and one of the things that had caused the main contractor on the project serious headaches — was the need to make the remote flight system entirely secondary to the “ordinary” pilot system. Unlike the Tigershark, which had been built from the ground up as a remote aircraft, the A–10E had to include legacy systems, most significantly in this case the autopilot, which had only been added to the plane in the A–1 °C conversions. Because of that, one of Rubeo’s companies had worked closely with the main contractor, developing a system that allowed both to coexist in the aircraft.
The head of that project was Rick Terci, an engineer based in Seattle. Rubeo’s call woke him up.
“The system won’t dead start in the air if it’s been under human control,” said Terci when Rubeo explained what was happening. “Not without her permission. The only way I can think of to get the remote on would be to turn the autopilot on first. Then you could cut in with the command. That would work. But you have to get the autopilot on.”
“Yes.” Rubeo saw the unit in his head, a black box located at the right side of the fuselage just in front of the canopy. For a normal aircraft, the shot would be almost impossible. But the Tigershark’s rail gun could hit the spot with precision.