Final Flight

“Like fucking shit we are. I’ll eject first. I’m not—”

“Oh yes you fucking are, Tarkington, you asshole. We’re not blowing the canopy off until we’ve killed this guy. There ain’t no other way.”

Jake was craning back over his right shoulder. He popped some more chaff. He was about three miles ahead now. He lowered the right wing and racked the plane into a six-G turn.

“Jesus! You really mean it.”

“Yep.”

Toad struggled to talk above the G. “You’re one crazy son of a bitch, Grafton.”

Jake had his head back. The Tomcat was in a 90-degree angle-of-bank turn and the transport was straight overhead. He kept the G on. “I hope you make it, Tarkington. Just don’t pull the handle until after we hit. Promise me.”

“I’m behind you all the way, CAG,” Toad mumbled.

They were almost through the turn. The ECM was wailing. Those MiGs were close. They’d be fools to risk a missile shot this close to the transport.

“I don’t think you’re cut out for this business, kid.”

He rolled wings level and pulled the throttles aft to about 80 percent RPM.

* * *

Inside the Ilyushin the crew heard the roar of the fighter’s engines as it shot over them and watched it depart toward their ten o’clock position. They cheered, then watched in silent horror as the fighter began a level turn toward their twelve o’clock.

Now it was coming back, head-on. The copilot was sobbing.

Qazi squatted behind the crew and looked forward through the windscreen, waiting for the fighter’s cannon to erupt. The Tomcat looked like a bird of prey from this angle, closing, growing larger, its wings waggling as the pilot adjusted his course, straight for the Ilyushin’s cockpit. The pilot must be Grafton. Why doesn’t he shoot? Yet even as Qazi wondered, he knew. Without thinking, he seized a handhold and braced himself. His wrists were still cuffed together.

Oh, too bad, too bad!

* * *

At first the transport was just there, in the great empty blue sky in front of the F-14, fixed in space. Then it grew visibly larger. And larger. Now it filled the windscreen. At the last possible instant Grafton slammed the left wing down and pulled.

The planes hit.

* * *

Jake’s head slammed against the starboard side of the canopy and the Gs smashed him and threw him forward and he lost his grip on stick and throttles. Incredibly, the Gs increased. He was flung forward and sideways and upward all at the same time.

He fought for the lower ejection handle, between his legs, but he couldn’t reach it. Even with his straps tight, the G had pushed him up and forward away from the seat and as the G tore at him, he couldn’t reach the lower handle, which was closer than the upper handle. It had to be back under him. If Toad would only pull either of his ejection handles then both seats would fire. He saw red as the little veins in his eyeballs burst and he screamed through clenched teeth to stay conscious and fought with superhuman strength to reach the handle between his legs with his left hand while he used his right to push himself backward toward the seat.

Then the cockpit disintegrated and he was slammed by wind-blast, as if he had been hurled into a wall, and his arms were flailing. The windblast subsided and the G was gone.

He was falling, still attached to the seat, falling, spinning slowly, unable to move. Through a reddish haze he saw the sun and the sea blink past, changing positions over and over. It seemed to go on forever, this fall through space. An awareness that the parachute had not deployed was there somewhere on the edge of his consciousness.

Falling and slowly spinning, under a brilliant sun toward the sea deep and blue, falling as the Gods fell, falling, falling.

29

From his bed Toad Tarkington could see the blue of the Mediterranean in the sun. The sea was three blocks away. The white sand beach was hidden by buildings, but he knew the sand was there, waiting. Maybe next week, after they put a walking cast on this leg. He would borrow some crutches and hobble to the beach even if it took all morning.

A breeze stirred the curtains. It was warm and comfortable. Toad put his head back on the pillow and sighed.

He was bored. Ten days had passed since an Israeli missile boat had plucked him from the sea. Two operations on his right leg ago. A lifetime ago. A former life, with its fears and terrors fading, though too slowly. It had taken two nights and a day for the boat to reach port. They had kept him sedated. The second day in the hospital, after he had fully recovered from the effects of the anesthesia of the first operation, the Naval Attache from the U.S. embassy had spent two hours questioning him with a tape recorder running. The attache had ordered Toad not to talk to any reporters, had given him a handful of Israeli money from his own pocket, and had shaken hands as he left. Toad had seen no one but hospital personnel since. Not a single reporter had wandered by for a snubbing. He had read his only magazine, a month-old international edition of Time, three times cover to cover. He picked it up and threw it across the room.

He glared at the telephone on the bedside table. It had not rung since he arrived. And why should it? He had tried to call his folks in Los Angeles, and when no one answered he remembered they were on vacation. They had probably gone to the mountains, and there was no use trying to reach them because there was no phone in the cabin and he would have to leave a message at that grocery store at the crossroads. A message like that would upset his mother — too ominous. No sense in alarming her. He was alright and would get well and a letter describing his adventures would be enough. She and Dad could read the letter when they got back to L.A. Still, it would be nice to talk to someone, to hear a voice from the real world.

Under the telephone was a telephone book. No listing for Judith Farrell. Or for J. Farrell. Or for any Farrell or Ferrell or Ferrel. Of course not, Toad, my man, that was an alias. He had searched the listings anyway. He was damned tired of lying on his back. Twice a day they sat him up, and occasionally they rolled him over for a while. He was sick of it. His ass was sore and his back was sore where the sheets chaffed him and he was sick of this whole rotten hospital gig.

When the nurse came he would see if she could get him some western novels, maybe some Louis L’Amour. Somebody in this corner of the world must read cowboy stories.

He turned as much as he could and slapped the pillows, trying to plump them. He cursed under his breath. When he got himself rearranged, a woman was standing in the doorway.

“Hello, Robert.”

He gaped.

“May I come in?”

“Of course. Please.” He remembered to smile. “How …?”

She sat in the only chair, her hands on top of the purse in her lap, her knees together. Her hair was different, fluffier.

“I was thinking about you,” he said at last. “Wondering, you know.” She was even more lovely than he remembered.

“I’m sorry about Captain Grafton,” she said.

Toad reached for the bed rails to steady himself. Whenever he thought about it he remembered the Gs, the violent slamming and the struggle to remain conscious as he fought to reach the ejection handle, and he remembered the terror. Holding the cold, smooth aluminum bed rails helped. The sun was still shining on the sea