The Hot Pilots (26 page)

“We’ve found a little break in this soup,” Blue radioed. “A clear spot right in the middle. We’re circling within it. Here’s
the coordinates …”

As Robbie steered the way he was told, Farris said, “Four, you take on some gas first …”

“Boss, we’re all hurting,” another pilot, whom Robbie thought was Warrior Two, cut in.

“Rog, Warrior Two,” Farris said. “Warrior Four, I’m sorry about this, son, but what you’re going to have to do is take on
just enough to keep your engine going, then cycle off to let somebody else have a chance. When everybody’s set you’ll cycle
back on for a complete fill, got it?”

“Rog, copy,” Robbie transmitted, sighing in relief as his Thud broke out of the cloud mass. “I see the tanker!” he crowed.

“Go get him, son,” Farris ordered.

“And make it quick, Lieutenant,” Warrior Three, Captain Strauss, interjected. “I’m coming up on empty.”

It was as if the clouds were a doughnut, and the clear space in which the big jet tanker was circling was the hole in that
doughnut’s center. The clearing was low, less than a thousand feet, and only a couple of miles around; a flattened oval of
visibility hanging suspended in a milky white sky.

Robbie nudged forward the throttle to catch up with the tanker, holding his breath all the while. He knew that he was already
flying on fumes, and that he could expect to flame out at any second. As he closed on the tanker’s tail he thought the big
jet airlinerlike craft looked familiar, but he didn’t know why, and then he put the matter out of his mind. He couldn’t afford
any distractions as he settled into position behind and a little below the tanker’s tail. Banking off his starboard wing in
staggered formation were the three other thirsty birds of Warrior flight, anxiously waiting their turn at the watering hole.

Robbie could see the tanker’s fuel boom operator lying on his belly, peering out at him like a gunner through the big window
in the turret beneath the tanker’s tail. The operator began working his controls and the boom began extending down toward
the fuel receptacle in the Thud’s nose. The twin rudders on the boom twisted around like rabbits’ ears as the operator adjusted
his aim. Robbie activated the control that opened up the filler tube on his Thud’s nose and concentrated on making the connection.

The boom touched the receptacle and then slid off. It swung wide, retracted, and then extended maddeningly slowly again.

And again Robbie missed.

“Come on, Warrior Four,” Farris coaxed urgently. “We haven’t got the time, son. We’re
all
on empty now, and visibility is decreasing.”

Robbie didn’t bother to reply. He’d already noticed that the little oasis of visibility had begun to contract; that was his
problem. He’d refueled in flight before, but never when he and the tanker he was chasing were racking around in an ever-shrinking
racetrack oval. The boom was reacting to the increasing centrifugal force, veering sideways as Robbie tried to make the connection.
The boom operator would have to work his rudders to compensate—

And this is my last try
, Robbie thought. He could hear the change in his engine’s pitch. He was going to flame out. If he blew it this time he’d
have to bail out … become a prisoner of war, if gomer didn’t skin him alive …

He held his breath as he angled up his Thud’s nose toward that life-saving boom, and then the operator, God bless him, shoved
it home.

“Yeah!” Robbie cried out in triumph, and then his engine flamed out. He felt the airplane begin to fall, then stabilize. The
boom’s hydraulic locks had clicked into place. The tanker was towing his Thud as it took on fuel. Robbie watched his gauges
rise to a fraction above empty, and then restarted his windmilling engine.

“Come on off, son,” Farris said urgently. “We’ve got to—”

Robbie froze. The boom operator had disconnected. The boom was hovering, waiting for the next customer, but Robbie could not
bring himself to relinquish his position.
It took me forever to make the connection
, he thought.
I’ve only taken on a few minutes of fuel
—

“I’m going to flame out!” Strauss cried.

Visibililty is almost gone. I won’t be able to connect again
, Robbie thought distractedly. He was panicking, he knew, but he couldn’t help it.
Got to take on more gas now
—

“Get off that tanker!” Warrior Two was shouting.

“Everybody shut up!” Farris ordered. “Lieutenant Greene, you listen now,” he said calmly. “I realize that you’re Herman Gold’s
grandson and that this is a GAT AT-909 Aero-Tanker—”

Robbie smiled. He
knew
there’d been something familiar about the tanker.

“But just because your grandpa built this gas station,” Farris continued, “doesn’t mean you own it …”

Robbie laughed, and in the process of laughing found the handle he needed to gain control over his fear. He dropped away from
the tanker. Strauss instantly replaced him, and within seconds the veteran combat pilot was hooked to the boom and taking
on fuel.

“Boss, everyone. I’m sorry,” Robbie muttered thickly.

“We’ll talk later,” Farris said. “Now get your mind right, kid. We still have a target to hit.”

“We still going for the primary?” Strauss asked. He had taken on enough fuel to keep him flying and was in the process of
disconnecting from the tanker, to be replaced by another Thud.

“Let’s find out,” Farris replied, giving the order for the flight to tune back to the main communication channel. Together,
Warrior flight monitored the advance recon reports.

Sounds clear over the target right now
, Robbie thought, watching as Farris cycled onto the tanker and filled his tanks. Then it was Robbie’s turn to go back on,
this time to take on all the lovely fuel he could carry.

He was pleasantly surprised to find that hooking up this time was no big deal. He guessed that a lot of this business was
kind of like working an automobile’s clutch: It was easier to do if you didn’t think about it, but just did it …

“We’ll do a fly-by,” Farris told his pilots as the flight veered away from the tanker to rejoin the strike force. “The way
this freak weather system has been acting, there’s just no way to tell what we’ll find when we get there … In about ten minutes,
I’d say…”

The weather had cleared. Visibility was excellent. The word had gone out across the strike force that the primary target was
a go, and the swarm of Thuds had banked west, to follow the Song Ma River to the trestle bridge at Song Sen.

“Warrior flight, drop down to fifteen thousand.”

Robbie felt his spine tingle. They were on attack approach. Their flight would be the first in.

Robbie clicked his mike. “Boss, shouldn’t we punch our tanks?”

“Negative, son,” Farris replied kindly. “You only want to do that when MIGs are around. This far south they’re pretty rare.”

No MIGs?
Robbie thought, disappointed. This combat initiation was not turning out at all the way he’d hoped …

“Let’s have some radio discipline now,” Farris said.

Robbie understood the need for quiet. A few months ago the enemy had introduced a new weapon: SAM, for Surface to Air Missile.
The Thuds had electronic gear to warn of a SAM launch, but once those thirty-foot-long telephone poles were airborne the only
way to keep them out of your tail pipe was to eyeball them early, take evasive action, and spread the word so that the other
Thud drivers could duck and feint. The radio had to be clear of chatter if any pilot was going to be able to sound that alarm.

“Warrior lead, this is Lodestone lead,” the radio crackled. Robbie listened. Lodestone was the call sign of the flak-suppression
F-100 SuperSabre flight.

“This is Warrior lead,” Farris said.”We’re three minutes from Initial Point—”

“Warrior, we’ve got a problem,” Lodestone overrode. “There’s enemy barges parked underneath the bridge. We think they’re heavily
armed. We tried to hit them, but our cannons and rockets can’t penetrate the bridge—”

“I copy, Lodestone,” Farris replied. “What about the ground defenses?”

“Same old story,” Lodestone replied, sounding frustrated. “Gomer’s got his guns placed in his
so-called
village on both sides of the river. Just like you guys, we’re not allowed to hit
villages
, even if they do have more gun barrels than chimneys sticking up.”

The enemy was so fucking sly
, Robbie thought in disgust.
And our politicians are so fucking dumb
—

The politicians back home cringed whenever gomer went whining to the press about how the big, bad, war-mongering Imperialist
American pilots were stomping on their peace-loving, rice-farming peasants. Accordingly, the politicians had tied one arm
behind the Air Force’s back by formulating strict rules of engagement. MIGs could not be shot at unless they were in the air,
and SAM sites could not be attacked unless they had already launched their missiles. The worst of it, however, was that nothing
even remotely resembling a civilian-populated area could be attacked, even
if
those peace-loving, rice-farming peasant types happened to be firing at the war-mongering pilots …

“All the jinking we’ve been doing to avoid the flak has us low on fuel,” Lodestone lead said. “Afraid we’re out of here, Warrior.”

“Well, thanks for trying, Lodestone,” Farris radioed.

“Rog, Warriors. Happy hunting. Lodestone out.”

“I’ve seen this before,” Farris announced. “Gomer likes to move those barges around, depending on where he thinks we’re going
to strike. Expect pedestal-mounted heavy machine guns, and lots of automatic small-arms fire. Gomer will try to hit us with
flak all the way coming in and all the way going out, but those barges will come into play when we’re at our most vulnerable:
just corning out of our attack dive at about three thousand feet, when our noses are up and our bellies are exposed.” He paused.
“I wish Intelligence had apprised us of those barges,” he muttered.

“Yeah,” Strauss cut in. “We could have arranged for flak suppression to have escorted us
during
our attack instead of prior to it. A little cover fire would give those fuckers on the barge something to think about …”

I can do that
, Robbie thought. He clicked his mike. “Boss, this is Four. I can do that—”

“What are you talking about, son?” Farris demanded. “There’s no way a Thud carrying a full load of ordnance can—”

“But I’m not carrying a full load,” Robbie said. “All I’ve got are a half dozen bombs.”

“That’s right, boss.” Strauss chuckled. “You wanted the kid to fly light his first time out, remember?”

“That’s one thing I
do
remember,” Farris argued. “It
is
his first time out—”

“I can go in with you and your wingman during your attack,” Robbie said. “Then, once you’ve toggled off, you can do the same
for Strauss and me.”

“Think about what you’re saying, Lieutenant. You’ll be exposing yourself
twice
to the enemy.”

“I’m willing to do it,” Robbie said firmly, all the while trying to control the trembling in his voice. He wasn’t totally
sure he had the balls to expose himself
once
to the enemy.

“It’s totally against standard procedure,” Farris said worriedly.

“One minute to IP,” Strauss said quietly.

“Sonofabitch,” Farris cursed. “Okay, kid! We’ll try it your way! We’ll come in as planned. You come in from the southeast.”
He laughed. “From out of the sun, you fucking cowboy.”

“Affirmative, boss.” Robbie began working the switches to go from air-to-ground bombing mode to gun mode.

“And Lieutenant?”

“Yeah, boss?”

“If this works … I’ll buy you a beer when we get home …”

Farris tersely informed the other flights about Warrior’s change in tactics. This was necessary because the strike force’s
attack specifics were all set during the briefing. The slightest unanticipated change in that complex choreography would cause
major foul-ups down the line.

They were almost over the target now. The top of the two-lane steel trestle bridge was coming into view from out of the jungle.
Robbie could see the first white, puffy balls of flak expanding in the sky from the 37-millimeter guns nestled in the village;
the guns the SuperSabres had been restricted from attacking. Blue puffs of smoke—from larger 57-millimeter guns—added to the
fireworks display. Then small-arms gunfire began pouring from the twin jumbles of thatched-roof shacks and huts clustered
around the roads leading onto the bridge. Already the muddy riverbanks were obscured with a drifting haze of gun smoke.

Robbie peeled away from his element lead, Captain Strauss, then racked his Thud across the river, groaning in pain from G-stress
as he whipped the mammoth jet into its tight turn. He did a sideslip barrel roll, letting his nose drop down, and began his
strafing run. As he did so, just for the hell of it he glanced at his watch: 9:11.
Punch your time clock, Lieutenant. Welcome to the war
…

A half dozen barges bristling with weapons had moved out from beneath the bridge. Their many guns were now tracking Farris
and his wingman, who were executing their attack dive following the course of the river, perpendicular to the bridge. The
sensible approach would have been an angled dive traveling the
length
of the bridge, but that approach had been forbidden by the big shots safe behind their desks in Washington, who’d warned
that there would be hell to pay if any bombs overshot the bridge and landed in the villages on either side.

As the bomb-laden Thuds screamed down, the heavy machine guns on the boats opened fire. The red tracers crisscrossed upward,
joining with the flak coming from both riverbanks. Then the automatic rifles on the barges began to wink. Gomer had added
the last fine strands to the net of death he’d woven to pluck the Thuds from the sky.

Robbie, meanwhile, was hurtling down upon the unsuspecting barges from the opposite direction. He waited until his red pipper
gunsight was centered on the middle barge, and then he squeezed the trigger. The M-61 Vulcan gun mounted beneath the Thud’s
nose sounded like the world’s biggest electric shaver as its six barrels began revolving, spitting 20-millimeter slugs at
the rate of one hundred rounds per second. The rounds were falling short. A curtain of splashing water was rising up behind
the barge. Robbie nudged back the stick, the Thud’s nose rose a little, and the slightly elevated gun buzz-sawed the barge
until there was nothing left but wreckage and a gradually expanding oil slick. He kicked rudder, the Thud’s nose yawed to
left and to right, and the swinging cannon hosed down the two barges on either side of the first. One of them exploded in
a geyser of flame, igniting the oil slick. Now the river itself was on fire.