him. Now he was staring ahead with a speechless, steadily broadening grin.
The trailer, seemingly in slow motion, detached itself, swerved gently to its right, and passed the truck, as if being driven by an impatient ghost who summarily intended to ram us. The truck stopped as the driver watched helplessly, wanting to steer clear of what was about to transpire. The kamikaze power cart, with its ghost pilot Murphy, gathered speed and bore down on us with our cargo of pyrotechnics.
Our four big propellers, each with four blades that resembled huge paddles, were spinning furiously, as turboprops like to do even at idle. Anything running into the props would tear them asunder, scattering debris at bullet speeds. Our load of sleeping 30 millimeters would not take kindly to such intrusion. With about a hundred feet to go, the errant trailer slowed, veered to the left, across our nose, and toppled into a ditch. Ole Murph shook his fist in frustration at us.
Since the start of Desert Shield, the book on hot cargo had all but been thrown overboard. In the Middle East, a 'bad moon was risin',' as the old song goes. I sure felt it. And the ammo had to get there fast. No longer were we parked in remote areas or bothered with busywork. The powers that be had decided, in the interest of expediency, to keep the flow moving as fast as possible and hoped that Ole Murphy would lie low.
For the most part he did, or so some would believe. But the truth is that wethose of us who flew and supported the air logistical tailwere simply better than they thought we were. The Pentagon planners had crossed their fingers and sat nervously in their chairs, hoping that the giant scheme would unfold with some measure of success and a minimal loss of life and property. But their apprehension was entirely unwarranted. The first team was on the field. And we were coming through like the champs we were since the day the red flag went up.
We've exchanged our hot cargo for cold cargo. We're westbound across the pond, headed back to the States. The stars are out by the blue zillions tonight, but no one is noticing. Our thoughts are dwelling on the objects in the rear.
There are four stainless steel boxes in our cavernous cargo bay. We're carrying HRs the Air Force's warm and sensitive code for dead bodies: human remains. The war hasn't even started yet, and already we're bringing home gelatinous masses that used to be human beings.
The loadmasters are in the bunks; there's no reason for anyone to be back there. We have no other cargo or passengers. But nature calls, so I unstrap and, leaving the jet in Bones's charge, climb down the flight deck ladder. Turning toward the lavatory, I stop to view the scene.
The cargo bay lights have been turned off to preserve the bulbs, except for a few near the front. The din of the engines assaults the aural nerves. Brian wastes no effort trying to regulate the temperature back here, from his engineering station up front. It is cold enough to make your breath fog.
A third of the way back, the four boxes are chained to a steel pallet that is, in turn, secured to the cargo floor mooring locks. There are no flags draped over them, but there is a computer printout attached with each occupant's name plus an accounting control number of some sort.
There is a very hot rumor circulatingintensely talked about everywhere we go. The government has ordered 10,000 of these cold, loathsome containers. In a few weeks I may be looking at a plane packed full of them, a vision that chills me more than the cold air could. The two boxes on the left contain the remains of two fighter pilots.
They were killed on a training flight somewhere in Saudi Arabia. Their F-15 apparently just flew into the ground while they were maneuvering at low altitude.
I speculate that the desert did it. Deserts are real killers to low fliers. Taking quick glances at the ground, one who is not familiar with the desert environment can mistake brush and small scrub trees for the large trees he was accustomed to. Instead of being 50 feet above a 100-foot tree, he may be 5 feet above a 10-foot tree. That doesn't leave a lot of room for error. Yes, of course they had a radar altimeter, but in the heat of the fight or the excitement of the chase or whateverwell, it just takes a second's worth of diverted attention. Yeah, I think the desert is to blame for this.
Arabian deserts are all the more dangerous. I heard that the Saudis have to import sand for concrete; theirs is too fine grained. I believe it, because their sand is airborne about as much time as it's not. The ultrafine particles lift into the sky, borne by winds racing unchecked across the landscape, the grains becoming finer with altitude. The result is an absence of horizon. There's only a pale blue zenith that gradually changes to a pale yellow earth below. Your judgment has to be flawless when flying low and fast through such a surreal world.
Judgment is just one event in the flier's survival sequence. Eye must first see the situation or the threat. The image is flashed to the brain. The brain sorts out the image and makes a decision based on sensory data stored in its memory cells. The decision takes the form of an electrical signal sent through the nerves to the muscles, which in turn grip and apply pressure to the stick, the rudder, the throttles. These linkages move wires, cables, and hydraulic actuators that activate flight control surfaces and fuel control valves. The flight control surfaces flex, resulting in aerodynamic pressures that exert force on the aircraft to change its flight path. The point at which flesh meets metal in the sequence is not important. The only relevant factor is the final resultthe flight path. The flier and the craft are merged. They're one. And they live or die as one.
The F-15 is moving at 600 miles per hour, maybe faster, 50 feet above an alien, indistinct world. Was it a millisecond's inattention? A heartbeat of a hesitation? I don't know. They just flew into the ground.
I wonder if there is anything more in those boxes than a few charred fragments of bone, boot leather, and helmet. I pose the question to Bones. But he just shrugs, and I regret asking, feeling that I've violated some unspoken sacred code.
I almost flew into the ground once. I was young and quite stupid at times and wanted to impress my boss. I was tapped to fly as number four in a flight of four A-7s. The flight would be part of an experiment. An especially modified C-130 transport would launch an unmanned radio-controlled drogue that would fly across the gunnery range, spewing out chaff in a long corridor. Chaff is like thousands of tiny slivers of aluminum foil that hang for long periods in the sky, like clouds. It is invisible to the distant eye, but radar can see it within certain frequency parameters. Our mission was to delineate the chaff corridor on our radar scopes and fly so as to remain within it. The idea was that enemy air defense radar would not be able to isolate us within the cloud until we dove out of it onto the target, thus reducing our vulnerability to radar-graded antiaircraft weapons. We were trying to learn from the hard knocks of Viet Nam.
My role wasn't important, even though I would be the only plane actually to attack the target. Delineating the chaff cloud was the main objective. We just didn't know if our A-7 radars could do it. Colonel Mike Nelson, my squadron commander, was in the lead Corsair, and the wing deputy commander for operations, a very powerful man, was flying as number two. My squadron mate Duane, the number three man, would accelerate out ahead of the formation and fly across the range, visually checking for souvenir collectors and illegal aliens who often crossed the ranges, coming up from Mexico.
Other experiments had also been inaugurated in this post-Viet Nam era of adjustment. On a few occasions we had practiced the 'pop-up' deliveries that are now standard practice. It was a thrilling maneuver in which you flew very low to avoid hostile radar, relying on your inertial navigation system and chart-reading skills until you were close to the target. Then, with an abrupt pull-up, followed by a daring roll to the inverted position, you acquired the target visually while upside down or nearly so. Swiftly rolling wings level, in a thunderous dive, you released the bombs and rolled hard back to the deck to escape. No other fighter tactic made a pilot's aggressive juices pump with such intensity. The thrill was proportional to the danger, but the risk could be minimized by thoroughly planning and thinking through the attack beforehand. Such was my near fatal downfall.
As Duane called the range clear, I impulsively decided to make a pop-up attack instead of the usual high dive. The bosses were looking; I could easily impress them. The target was an old Korean war vintage F-84 jet parked on a runway in a desert valley. I broke away, dove for a low line of hills south of the target, and leveled off as close to the ground as I dared. The dry washes and scrub brush of the desert floor flashed underneath the nose in a blur. Cliffs of yellow sandstone scurried past the wings.
The underpowered A-7 is no speed demon compared with other fighters, but flying at 500 knots down in the 'weeds' shocked my adrenalin glands. My arteries pumped like the jet's hydraulic systems. Something akin to an electrified blaze of light flowed through me, buzzing and bubbling like the immense, pressurized stream of fuel to the insatiable engine. I was intensely alive.
But as I smoked up the valley, I began to realize that I hadn't thought this out enough. Where was the target? The inertial measurement system, or IMS, indicated that it was straight ahead, but the black box could be a
