But no way he was getting to 24,000 feet, not in this lifetime. He was at six thousand, and struggling as it was.
How high can you fly with a hole in your wing?
The tanker pilot brought the plane to about seven thousand feet and threw his landing gear out to help slow himself down. Doberman huffed and puffed against the wind to hold the Hog relatively steady as he closed in. Everything was taking so damn long but at least the A-10 was flying perfectly; slow and perfect.
Then as the pilot pushed the Hog the last few feet toward the long pipe extending from the plane’s rear end, he felt his head starting to spin. His eyes seemed to slip back behind their sockets and down into his cheeks. When he got them back in place, he thought he was coming too close too fast and backed off the throttle; the next thing he knew, he was heading downward in a spin.
A-Bomb, riding off Doberman’s starboard wing, saw the Hog tilting to the left. Before he could key the mike to say anything, Doberman’s plane had rolled toward the earth.
He tucked his wing and started to follow. There was no fresh sign of damage to the Hog, and the wing remained intact despite the stress of the dive. In fact, if A-Bomb didn’t know there was a hole in it, he would have sworn there was nothing wrong with the A-lOA that was plummeting toward the earth at several hundred miles an hour.
Doberman didn’t answer his hail. A-Bomb tried choking back the metallic taste that crept into the corners of his mouth, but it kept coming.
Lines and circles. You could divide the world into lines and circles. Everything could be measured. In the physical world, at least. Measuring changed it. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, right? But it could always be counted off somehow.
Counting off. Ten, nine, eight…
Doberman’s eyes found the altimeter clock as he pleaded with the stick to right the aircraft. He had a bum wing, but he could do it. He’d been a check pilot, putting newly overhauled Hogs through their paces. This was a piece of cake.
Unlucky or not, he could do it.
His mind was flooded with images that rolled and pitched much faster than the injured Hog. He was dizzy as hell, and the shake had returned, only it was hitting his chest. He reached for the throttle, discovering with a start that his hand was already on it.
What the fuck is going on with my brain!
Yo! Snap the hell out of it!
Something in his head hiccupped as the Hog fell from his hands. Now he felt a numb pain in his chest.
Maybe the damage this morning was supposed to take him out. Maybe somebody, somewhere was fixing the ledger. Luckiest dead man, my ass.
JR was there, giving him advice. “Fold when you see the other guy’s eyes twinkle.”
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
Why’d you teach a little kid how to play poker for?
Because you’re too young to parachute.
JR took him up in Cessna for his thirteenth birthday, got him hooked on flying.
For his fourteenth birthday, JR got him a parachute ride, the damn coolest thing that had ever happened to him in his life.
Too cool to tell his mom, though, until after he landed intact.
Jump, JR was telling him. Just jump. Everything else is automatic.
A-Bomb watched as Doberman’s starboard wing began to edge upwards; the plane was heading into a spin.
“Eject!” he yelled over the radio. “Doberman eject! Get the fuck out of that plane!”
Doberman felt it getting further and further away from him. He couldn’t get the nose pointed back upwards, and now the wing was sliding out from under him.
The airbrakes weren’t working. The right aileron had been hit, and probably the inside ones were screwed up.
There was a simple formula in his head for fixing all of this. It was just a matter of finding it in the clutter.
Call with two pair. Fold on anything less.
A-Bomb was yelling at him, but Doberman couldn’t hear what he was saying.
He could hear his uncle, though. He was telling him to jump from the Cessna. Jump; everything else is automatic.
No, that was the problem; he was so tired he was trying to fly on instincts and the Hog didn’t like that, not with a frazzled wing.
He wasn’t compensating right. He was pretending he was just out of the maintenance shop. Straighten up and fly right, he told himself.
The refrain danced in his brain. JR used to hum that song. Meant he had a good hand. Gave himself away. Made it easy to beat him.
The Hog snorted as Doberman’s hands finally took hold of its sides. The metallic animal sniffed at the air, unsure where the hell it was. A small piece from its wing, part of the aileron, damaged by debris when the missile hit, flew backwards like a Frisbee. Then the craft straightened herself out.
Doberman leveled out at one thousand feet, heart pumping, feet shaking, but head clear.
“Man, you got a one-track mind with this ejection thing,” he told A-Bomb. “I don’t feel like jumping today. Maybe tomorrow.
CHAPTER 23
Mongoose found the two Hogs flying together at about three thousand feet. They were climbing back toward the tanker like a pair of little old ladies walking up a staircase.
“What the hell happened?”
“I think the wash from the tanker knocked something loose in the wing,” Doberman told him. “That and I might have had a touch of vertigo creeping in on the tanker.”
“Definite on that first theory,” said A-Bomb. “Part of your aileron is missing.”
“Can you fly that thing?” Mongoose asked.
“Watch me.”
“I don’t know how that fuckin’ wing is holding together,” said A-Bomb. “I say we head for the nearest set of sand bags and the hell with King Fahd.”
“I can make it,” said Doberman. “I just need some more gas, that’s all.”
“I think we’ve pushed it far enough,” said Mongoose. He pulled his map open, double-checking their position. “Let A-Bomb and me gas up, then call it a day. We’ll hang with you until the chopper comes.”
“Jesus, we’ve come this far,” said Doberman. “I know I can do that tanker. Just get the guy to come down to me instead of the other way around.”
“The tanker just bingo’d,” said Mongoose. “A replacement is on the way.”
“Fine. Have him meet us en route to Fahd,” said Doberman. “Hell, I got plenty of gas. I can squeeze another hundred miles out of what I’ve got left. I’ll back off power another ten percent.”
“You’re flying backwards as it is,” said A-Bomb. “No shit, Goose, I think we’ve pushed this as far as it can go.”
“You can’t order me to bail out. That’s bullshit. I’m not losing this plane.”
“You have to get a lot higher and faster to refuel,” Mongoose told Doberman. “I don’t know if you’ll hang together.”
“Get me a divert field then.”
“What if the gear doesn’t come down?”
“Man, why are you giving up on me?”
“I’m not giving up on you, Doberman. I’m trying to keep you in one piece.”
Mongoose bit back an angry response, then looked at the list of fields. They were all pretty damn far from here; might just as well go on to King Fahd. He checked his map and the latitude-longitude on the INS again. But it wasn’t until he glanced at his own fuel stores that it all clicked.
“Devil Two, give me your fuel status.”
Doberman reported the weight of the fuel in his tanks with a hair less belligerence than before. Mongoose worked out the math. He checked his altitude, then cut his own power to take the Hog down to about one hundred and eighty-five nautical miles an hour. The plane didn’t like it; he dropped the nose and went down to five thousand, where her complaints weren’t quite as vociferous.