A Private Little War (53 page)

“It was like nothing I’ve ever seen,” he would say, staring into the cold, oily surface of his coffee, shaking his head as though he almost believed what he was saying. Which, all things considered, wasn’t difficult. It
was
like nothing he’d ever seen because he hadn’t actually seen anything. He was just talking so that he didn’t have to talk about Lefty.

That, he had seen. And Porter didn’t want to think about that ever again.

OPS:
Medical to the field. Clear C. Clear the infield aprons.

TWR:
Bad Dog, pull up and out. Come left, east by east, and we’ll walk you home.

HOT-2:
Fenn?

HOT-1:
Hold post, Porter. Stay with me.

Carter had ammunition belts rubbing against his ankles. Clawing for altitude, running from the airfield as though from a fire, and with the rest of his hodgepodge wing trailing behind, he felt the weight of the bullets subtly altering the flight characteristics of his fighter. There was the weight of the fuel in the tank behind his head, sloshing backward toward earth as his pitch increased, and the weight of the bombs he carried. The cannon rounds in their flimsy metal clips (which broke constantly, keeping the machine shop forever busy at mending) weighed him down as he struggled for the shifting, clotted soup of the clouds. There was the weight of his guns, the weight of the machine dragging behind him—of flaps and rudder and wings and tail and his seat and the radio and instruments, all of it being yanked forward and upward by the chopping of the propeller, the firing of the pistons in their cylinders. There was the great, solid weight of the engine itself. And there was the weight of him. Of his damp, cold leathers, his helmet, his jumpsuit, his sidearm and pocket lint and gloves and boots; of his blood and bone and brains.

All of it wanted to fall. Everything wanted to go to ground—the most natural thing in the world. And Carter would let it. He would give to gravity what it wanted soon enough. When he came to the apex of the parabola he was describing, the highest point in the hump of air he climbed over the distant earth, he would hang an instant—weightless, like he’d been two years ago in the instant the dropship that’d brought him here had fallen clear of the clamps—then roll over and descend like wrath. He would go, dropping weight as he went, spitting out bullets and shedding bombs, burning fuel and loosing the weight of held breath and expectation as he howled down upon the enemy that had been chosen for him. To fight them, finally, with fairness and equanimity. Guns with guns and bombs with bombs. To give them their fair shot at him, meet them in the interstices between sky and ground, see them in the open where neither of them could hide.

Carter called in his flight to rally. He circled to let them gather and form up. Below him, terrible things were happening. And as he reached his chosen point in the sky, he rolled over, pointed his nose toward the ground, and became a terrible thing himself.

HOT-3:
Tower…

HOT-1:
Ops? What are we doing here?

HOT-3:
I gotta… Down, down, down.

TWR:
Bad Dog, this is control. Do you copy?

HOT-1:
Ops! I saw entry flares. Ten and two, high, coming in and headed for the moors near Southbend. Past, maybe.

OPS:
Jackrabbit, hold one.

OPS:
A flight, this is Ops. Form up.

HOT-3:
[Coughing] I need a… [Unintelligible] (Doctor?)

OPS:
Jackrabbit, Ops. Do you have a visual of the target?

HOT-3:
I can’t… Oh God. There’s so much blood. I don’t…

HOT-1:
What target, Ops? The landing site?

TWR:
Bad Dog, you are drifting. Come back on your heading.

HOT-3:
I’m gonna try to…

OPS:
The ground fire, Jackrabbit. The weapons. What landing site?

HOT-3:
Down. Put down.

HOT-3:
I don’t want to die. I don’t… I don’t want to die now.

HOT-1:
No. Not unless they’re shooting at us, Ted.

OPS:
Not now.

HOT-1:
We’re at almost twenty thousand feet here, Ops. No, I can’t.

HOT-3:
Not now. Not now.

OPS:
A flight, any visual?

HOT-3:
No. No. No. [Coughing]

Hot-4:
No, Ops. No visual.

HOT-3:
No!

HOT-3:
Tower, Bad Dog. Coming around to two-eight-zero. I’m coming home.

TWR:
Copy that, Bad Dog. Can you—

HOT-3:
Blood all over the thing. I’m hurt pretty bad.

TWR:
We’re waiting on you, Bad Dog. You’re going to be fine.

HOT-3:
[Sound of grunting or heavy breathing] Gonna be fine. Coming home.

RAM:
[Sound of banging—similar to engine oil pressure drop or failing cylinder]

HOT-3:
I can see the—

TWR:
Bad Dog, altitude is—

HOT-3:
Flaps.

OPS:
Come on home, Lefty.

TWR:
Altitude is low. Come up. Come up.

RAM:
[Sound of flash-over, engine sound decreases, spooling down]

HOT-3:
[Screaming, unintelligible, continues to end]

HOT-4:
Oh my God.

TWR:
Bad Dog, do you copy?

HOT-4:
Flame out! Lefty’s on fire! On fire!

TWR:
Bad Dog?

RAM:
[Sound of roaring—similar to engine fire or flash-over]

HOT-1:
Fuck you, Ted.

RAM:
[Sound of impact]

END OF RECORDING

HOT-1:
Fuck you, Ted.

Fenn had kicked Jackrabbit into a long, dancing turn, standing her high on her wing and watching the wet compass spin before nosing down into a shallow dive. He’d throttled back his engine, the glideslope seeming to pull him toward the ground with a slow-mounting tension of mass and alien gravities.

“Porter, follow me. Low six.”

“Roger that, Jackrabbit. Falling in.”

Lefty was like a dud firework. He was the last flare in the box, drifting to ground unnoticed. Fenn killed his channel. He didn’t need anyone else’s screams to haunt him, though he knew some of the others—Carter—would suckle at them, drain every last decibel like an alcoholic tonguing the neck of an emptied bottle. While he was at it, he killed the Ops channel as well.

“A flight, this is Jackrabbit. New target information.”

Fenn explained. Looking up and back across the open spine of his plane, past the shark fin tail, he saw the wing of bombers moving like motes in the diffuse sun, the face shield of his helmet polarizing until he could just make them out waltzing the box.

They were going to hit the guns that’d got Lefty, easily identified by sporadic radio pickups on the navigation computers and, closer to the ground, by the fact that they’d be the only things shooting back. He felt ridiculous saying it, giving the orders. The tough-guy dialogue coming from inside him staled on his lips, the lusting after pointless vengeance an easily recognized cliché in a heart that spent so much time agonizing over past stupidities and judging the actions of every other organ surrounding it.

But Fenn did it. He spoke the words and he gave the orders because it was important—because, for a minute, it might make him feel better about having watched Lefty Berthold burn to death and go candling off into the long dark. Hitting these few guns wouldn’t matter in the long run, but Fenn felt it needed to be done regardless. Also, he didn’t believe any of them had much longer to run anyhow, so when they were done with the guns, they would hit something else. And they would keep hitting, Fenn figured, until he didn’t have any punch left in him. Then he’d stop. Then he’d see what happened next.

“Copy, Jackrabbit,” Jack said once the orders had been given. Then there was a squelch as he switched channels to relay orders to his wing of bombers. Then another as he came back. “Uh… Ted’s giving us orders to stay put, Jackrabbit. To hold for fighter cover.”

“My radio must be malfunctioning then, Jack, because I didn’t hear that. You have your orders. Come down to visual range and fuck them up. Porter and I will draw fire. You follow.”

“Roger that, Jackrabbit. A flight is rolling hot.”

Above him, Fenn watched the bombers drop like stones, making fast for attack altitude. It was lovely sometimes, diving from such height. To come crashing down upon the earth with the promise of such fantastic violence. It wasn’t Fenn’s thing, as such, but he understood it. He hoped, looking up, that Jack had the joy of it. He thought it was about time someone had some fun in this droll little war.

Fenn turned around then to face the warped air beyond his spinning prop and eased his stick forward.

“Uh, Jackrabbit?” Porter’s voice, half whispering like he was leaning over Fenn’s shoulder. “We’re gonna do what now?”