“Yes. Captain Wong wants me to examine the radar.”
“Fuel! Does it have fuel?”
The mechanic blinked, then ran his hand over his bald head, perplexed.
Hack pushed the mechanic toward the plane, then began running toward the hangar. Short and squat, the building was made entirely of metal. It looked more like a civilian warehouse than a military hangar building. Thick bands of smoke slithered from the dark interior. The heavy sulfuric odor made Preston cough as he ran. As he reached the door he pushed his rifle up. He couldn’t see anything inside the building, but squeezed the trigger anyway, as if a random spray of bullets would guarantee his safety.
Nothing happened. He glanced down and realized he’d placed his finger not on the rifle trigger but on the grenade mechanism.
He coughed again, this time so hard that he had to drop to one knee to recover. But the air was even thicker here, the scent stifling. He rose slowly, telling himself to slow down.
A small fire burned about midway down the far side of the building, casting a reddish glow across the interior. Metal ramps and a small hand truck sat near the glow; a set of benches and lockers were lined against the wall.
A tractor was parked on his right. Hack sidled toward it, trying to hold back his coughs. A bomb trolley had been hooked to the back of back of the vehicle; two slim anti-air missiles sat in its base.
Hack put his arm over his mouth to filter the stench. Something moved on the floor a few feet from a workbench beyond the weapons carriage.
This time his finger was in the right place. Bullets ripped through the figure and ricocheted everywhere, the hangar reverberating with the automatic-weapons fire.
Hack coughed uncontrollably and threw himself down, rolling and starting to retch, his lungs and throat scratched by the toxic fumes of the smoldering fire. He tasted metal in his mouth; his nose felt like it had been filled with shavings from a metal lathe. Hack lost his hold on the gun and fell against the floor, stomach heaving.
He knew he had to stand up to breathe, but he wasn’t sure if there were other Iraqis in the hangar, or even if he’d killed the man he’d aimed at. Finally he summoned his energy and jumped up, threw his hand over his face and pumped his lungs against the fabric of his jumpsuit.
A man sprawled across the ground ten feet away. Hack froze, then realized the man wasn’t moving. He could see the man’s head glowing with the dim red light of the fire across the way.
A helmet. The pilot.
He walked toward the man, looking this way and that. His lungs felt pinched in his chest. He had to get outside and breathe.
The building rattled with an nearby explosion. Hack reached down and grabbed the man’s leg, hauling him backwards toward the yawning blue light. He started slowly, then felt himself tripping. He managed to keep his balance long enough to reach the entrance, where he fell over backwards. He whirled around, still coughing as the clean air hit his face. He gulped it, then reached back for the boot, pulling the Iraqi clear into the sunlight.
The dead pilot’s fingers were wrapped around a pistol. He was fully dressed in a pressurized suit and helmet. While his torso and limbs were intact, his nose and forehead looked more like a smashed pumpkin covered with red pulp than anything human. Part of the flight helmet was missing; the rest was cracked and fused to the man’s skull.
Something warm touched Hack’s shoulder. He flinched, thinking it was blood, but it was Fernandez, the Delta soldier.
“I shot him,” Hack said.
“I think a grenade got him, Major,” said Fernandez. “Look at the helmet.”
“Maybe,” said Hack, though he knew he’d seen the man move. He dropped down, examining the flightsuit. It seemed intact, though there were blood splatters all over it. The survival gear and belts, nicked here and there but seemingly sound, were thick with blood, already congealing into brown crust.
A helmet and mask. He’d have to go back into the hangar. There must be a dressing station further back.
“Fuel’s on it way, coming across the strip,” yelled Eugene, running up to him and pointing across the field.
“Can you load missiles?” Hack asked.
“Missiles?”
“There’s a pair in there, attached to a tractor. Can you get them on the plane?”
“I don’t know.”
“Hangar’s on fire,” Fernandez said.
“I know that,” said Preston, running back into the building. He bunched his flightsuit up to cover his mouth, and tried to hold his breath as much as possible. He pointed to the tractor, hoping the others were following, then kept going, kicking his 203 on the floor as he ran.
There should be a rack of suits standing against the wall, lockers for personal gear. A readyroom, an area to brief pilots.
Or maybe not. Maybe they used the buildings on the other side of the base.
No. He was thinking about this all wrong. It wasn’t a real air base. It was more like a lone bus terminal, a solitary stop.
Might be no gear here at all then.
The fire licked across the row of benches at the left, blue flames circling a tank of some sort. The light waxed and waned, cycling from red to purple to blue. The fire seemed to die but then flared back again.
Three large trucks sat at the back the building. Empty sacks sprawled on the floor near the far corner. Several benches and metal structures looked like lockers. Hack moved toward the lockers, then saw that the sacks were men’s bodies.
Something rumbled behind him. Hack whirled, throwing up his hands and expecting the building to come crashing down. But it was just the tractor — Eugene and Fernandez had managed to get it started.
Hack stepped over the bodies, looking for the suits or at least a helmet. The dead men were just workers or soldiers, of no use to him. There were large metal tool chests under the benches, and some old machinery that seemed like farming equipment. Tires were stacked against the wall, not far from where the fire was slowly working its way through a pile of rags.
As Hack turned to go back to the other side, his right leg kicked something on the floor. The fire flared bright and he saw it was an oxygen mask, its long hose curled in a neat spiral. As he scooped it up, something popped behind him. Now there was plenty of light to see — the fire leapt into a can on the floor, exploding and flaring up the tires. Hack ran out of the hangar, feeling the heat as the flames suddenly found plenty of fuel to ignite.
“The plane! Get the plane out of the way! The fire!” he screamed.
Fernandez and Eugene had already hooked the front of the MiG up to the tractor. The plane jerked and screeched as it moved — the Fulcrum’s parking brakes were obviously still set. Hack tucked the gas mask beneath his arm and ran for the wing, hauling himself up over the trailing edge flap as the plane stuttered forward with a groan. He caught the back end of the canopy and threw the mask inside, then squeezed himself around and down into the seat, his right leg catching on one of the panels as he fell in. He curled his leg beneath him as best he could, trying to orient himself.
So where was the brake?
He flailed on the left side of the cockpit of the unfamiliar plane. He couldn’t remember a thing, not from the MiG he had flown in or the briefings.
The emergency extension for the landing gear was on the left, at the bottom of the panel near his knee.
His mind blanked. He couldn’t find the parking brake on a Chevy, let alone work a foreign airplane.
On the panel. On the panel.
Hack found the small, slender handle right above the turn-and-slip indicator. He clawed at it, and the MiG rolled forward and then sideways, stopping abruptly. Unsure of himself again, not trusting his memory, he fumbled around the cockpit, looking for something else.