After the school, Tony had continued to assimilate everything he could find, not only to stay current, but because he knew it might make the difference someday. He was definitely the squadron’s, and maybe the wing’s, best expert on how to blow up things with airplanes. He had been in Korea for over half a year.
Hooter, in contrast, was still in his first tour, fresh from ROTC, and had only been in Korea a few months. He was still discovering the Falcon’s good and bad points. Every flight was an adventure, an experience to be remembered.
Tony welcomed Hooter’s almost constant stream of jokes and tricks, knowing that he applied the same energy to his ground duties and his flying.
Also to his after-hours activities. They were only a few years apart in age, but Tony had to work hard to keep up with his younger companion.
Though he’d never have admitted it out loud, Tony knew he couldn’t consider himself the best flier God had ever made. He was good, damned good, but he wasn’t the best. Instead, he’d found his edge in air-to-air combat with an ingrained ability to look at an adversary’s maneuvers, plan a step ahead, and force the other guy all over the sky. He’d overheard Hooter talking about him in the O-Club one night.
“Now the Saint doesn’t fly the best plane in the sky,” his monumentally inebriated wingman had said, “but he does fly confounded tactical.”
Hooter, on the other hand, was a natural shot and a demon flier, but he lacked experience and sometimes he lacked good judgment. His abilities and aggressiveness could usually get him out of the tight spots he landed in. In Tony’s book, though, “usually” wasn’t good enough. He’d been working Hooter hard to get him to understand the difference between “acceptable risk” and “frigging stupid.” Still, they’d been flying together for months now, and Tony had to admit that they made a damned good team. Their very different personalities and flying styles made a winning combination in the air.
There were differences on the physical side, too. Hooter was shorter by four inches, which meant a lot more room in the cockpit. That was just as well because Tony knew that his wingman had trouble keeping still anywhere. He smiled to himself. Even now he could see Hooter shifting from foot to foot while they waited to get a jeep ride out to the aircraft shelters.
He came out of his thoughts as the jeep they’d been waiting for came careening around the squadron building and slowed down to a crawl in front of them.
Hooter was already in motion. “Hey, Saint! Shake a leg. Daddy’s come to take us to the prom!”
Tony grinned and clambered aboard. They sped off across the tarmac toward the aircraft shelters.
Their planes for the night’s mission, side numbers 492 and 494, were parked in shelters G and H. These were reinforced concrete arches, strong enough to take anything up to a one-thousand pound bomb hit and protect the airplane inside. The armored blast doors in front and back were massive, but perfectly balanced, so that if the power drive for the door failed, they could be pushed open by hand. They could also be sealed against poison gas.
Crew chief Baines was already in shelter G waiting for him. Sergeant Baines was assigned to tail number 492 full-time. The same pilot did not fly this plane all the time, but Baines was always its crew chief. As far as he was concerned, it really belonged to him, and the pilots just “rented” it for occasional hops.
The shelter was big enough to hold a twin-engine F-15 or a larger aircraft, so the single-engine F-16 “Electric Jet” looked small, almost lost. It was surrounded by the paraphernalia needed to get a Falcon in the air: a ladder, starting cart, and fire extinguisher.
Tony started his preflight. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the crew chief, but Baines was human. You were only allowed one error in a jet aircraft, and Tony hadn’t made it yet. There were pilots who made such a great show of trusting the crew chief that the only thing they checked was the side number, to make sure they were getting in the right aircraft. Tony remembered the time that Crew Chief Baines and his cohorts had pulled a fast one and parked a plane without an engine in the arch. The hapless aviator assigned to fly it hadn’t caught on until he hit the starter for the third time.
Okay, then. The load: first a cigar-shaped centerline drop tank, carrying an extra three hundred gallons of fuel. The Sidewinders on the wingtips were mandatory. This was an air-to-ground mission, but you always had to be ready for air-to-air. Besides, the rails wouldn’t carry anything but the missiles. The plane’s port inboard rack held a flare dispenser and the starboard held a cluster of practice bombs. Each bomb weighed about twenty-five pounds and had a small gunpowder charge. Just large enough to make a satisfying bang and a mark large enough to judge exactly where it had landed. Pretty harmless stuff compared to the one-ton monsters filled with Minol that the F-16 would carry on a real ground-attack mission. Finally, the cannon was “hot.” The drum held 20-millimeter ammo for the strafing runs they would practice later.
Next he checked to make sure all the arming tags were removed from the ordnance and the racks. If the pins weren’t taken out, the practice bombs and flares wouldn’t drop when he pressed the release. Tony walked all the way around the plane, looking at the skin, the fueling points, the exhaust, following a mental routine he had performed almost a thousand times. He ended up by the ladder and signed the form Baines offered. It was now “his” airplane, at least until it was wheels down again.
He climbed in and strapped himself to the seat. If he had to eject, the straps would ensure that he stayed with the ejection seat as it pulled him from the plane. Connect oxygen, g-suit umbilical, microphone lead. Tony looked at his watch: 1955. Not bad, five minutes to engine start and all he had to do was light off the INS.
He turned on the Falcon’s master power and started the inertial navigation system. It took the gyros three minutes to spin up, more time than it took to start the engine. While it did, he performed the rest of his cockpit checks. When he finished, he called his wingman on the ground frequency. “Hooter, you ready?”
“Rog, Saint, on your call.”
From this point on they would use their nickname call signs exclusively. They were easier to remember than “Echo Zulu three,” and less confusing than “John” or “Tony.” There might be more than one pilot named John on a frequency, but the Wing’s call sign committee made sure there was only one Hooter and one Saint.
Tony looked at his watch again. It was exactly 2000 hours. He said, “Go.”
He signaled Baines, who hit the button to open the shelter’s blast doors. Tony simultaneously hit the starter and listened as the F-16’s engine spooled up. First a whine, a sound like a vacuum cleaner, then the teeth-rattling roar as he throttled to sixty-five percent power. Enough to start the ship moving.
Tony called on the ground frequency, “Bluejay flight on the North Loop ready to taxi.”
A disembodied voice answered in his helmet, “Bluejays, you are clear.”
Time to release the wheel brakes. He started rolling and came out into the night.
He looked to the left and saw Hooter leaving his arch. Tony switched to the tower frequency. “Bluejay flight rolling.”
“Roger, Bluejay, you are number three for takeoff. Wind is one five zero at ten.”
Rolling side by side, they reached the North Loop taxiway and turned right. The 35th had its shelters dispersed around a circular asphalt taxiway as wide as a two-lane road called the North Loop. The 80th had a similar “South Loop.”
As they approached the runway, they heard a two-ship formation of fighters like them take off. They rounded the last corner and saw a C-141 cargo plane lining up for its run. He heard the tower give it clearance and it started rolling. Tony called the controllers again: “Tower, Bluejay flight ‘number one’ for the active.”