Afterburn (3 page)

THE FRAG ORDER
that morning specified a well-known target, its weirdness part of the natural voodoo of the war. The Paul Doumer Bridge, a gargantuan structure named after the French statesman, crossed the Red River south of Hanoi, a vital link in the North Vietnamese supply line. Its steel-and-concrete foundations had resisted thousands of tons of bombs; mission after mission of fighter bombers had attacked the bridge yet barely scorched its roadbed. The Air Force, in its infinite bureaucratic frustration, had tried to B-52 it, even dropped floatable explosives upriver and detonated them when they drifted beneath the bridge spans. None of the schemes was successful. The bridge was damaged but never destroyed. And now, reported the frag order, the bridge was covered with bamboo scaffolding, and a repair barge was tied to a pylon. Air recon had spotted the barge; his job was to sink it.

He rose at 0500, ate, briefed the flight, his jocks scribbling numbers on their knee-board cards, then walked to the pilots' locker room. There, as always, he removed his wedding band, watch, and wallet, items of no use to him in flight and potentially useful to North Vietnamese captors. He stepped into his flight suit, then into a G suit, an inflatable girdle that covered his stomach and legs. This hooked to a line in the cockpit that was fed with engine compression bleed-off air. When the F-4 accelerated past 2.5 G's, sections of the suit swelled, increasing pressure on his legs and belly, keeping blood from pooling in the bottom of his body, a dangerous effect that caused blackout. Over the G suit he put on a torso harness, which he would snap into the plane's seat—it kept him from being buffeted around the cockpit when the plane was inverted. Then he pulled on the twenty-pound survival vest, jammed with maps, code books, water bottles, emergency transmitter, two hundred and fifty feet of rappelling line, flares, knives, ammunition, a saw, foodstuffs, a compass, fishing gear, a pound of rice, gold coins, first-aid pack, matches, shark repellent, whistle, signal mirror, sewing kit, water purification tablets, and morphine. Last, he strapped a .38 pistol to his calf.

He walked out toward the flight line at a slight cant from the weight of the survival vest, carrying his helmet. His gear clinked and rattled. Blinking in the low sunlight to the east, coffee on his tongue. The smell of JP-4 jet fuel. He had showered earlier, but only now did his consciousness wake and assume the form of a fifty-eight-thousand-pound fighter jet. Only now did he slip on the deep-green aviator sunglasses that reflected a curvilinear airfield where men wheeled bombs toward a row of jets, the backdrop lush forest, blue sky.

His plane was being serviced by the maintenance crew. He walked around the needle nose, the short wings, the slab of the tail. Slowly, looking. It was cool to the touch. He knew the plane's surfaces better than he remembered the faces of his children, the dents and patches and hydraulic fluid leaks, the zinc chromate smears where the plane had taken damage. The F-4 Phantom, so perfect on the drawing board, was in war a dinged, banged-up, pocked, underserviced, paint-peeling, galvanic-corroded workhorse that nonetheless performed remarkably. He climbed the ladder and lowered himself into the cockpit, trying to avoid flipping any panel switches. He wriggled into the seatback, parachute pack, and headrest. The cockpit smelled of burnt wiring. The air inside was over one hundred degrees, a slow roast. He attached the four quick-release fittings to the torso harness and buckled the leg-restraint straps across his shins; in an ejection, the straps protected his legs from striking the front canopy—and thereby being amputated. He plugged in the G suit and pulled on his helmet and then fitted the oxygen mask to his face. The start cart next to the plane whined, and he flipped the electrical power switch to external. The cockpit came alive. Gauge needles shivered, amber warning lights blinked on, the radio crackled awake. He checked the frequencies and killed a fly trapped in the forward section of the canopy. The heat gathered beneath his helmet. A world away, Ellie was washing up the dishes after dinner, the children letting the screen door slam as they ran outside with their ice-cream cones. Always he kept track of their parallel days. Ellie tying Ben's sneaker, Ellie on the telephone listening to her mother's complaints, Ellie in her sunglasses at the supermarket, Ellie reading to Julia, Ellie finding a gray hair, pulling at it angrily. Ellie dutiful, Ellie strong. Was this what they were? She living at the air base, he a technician in a tin can? A soldier-actor in a drama staged by politicians? All that was unanswerable. He preferred to think of his wife as he had seen her on his last leave—a glass of wine on the arm of her reading chair, an oversized volume of Renaissance paintings in her lap, the heavy bodies in torment and longing and ecstasy. Her hair fallen down. He imagined that she looked at the paintings and drank off the wine and then later struggled in the sheets, her fingers pressed against herself. He hoped she did that. He hoped to God she only did that—and would not be bitter at his absence. If she was bitter, perhaps later he could bear it with some kind of grace, since he was the cause of it. But maybe I am fooling myself, he thought, maybe she is happy without me, or mostly happy. You thought you knew but you never did. The children tired her each day, and she was alone with them. Alone now, presumably. Yet Ellie never showed doubt that he would return. Did she worry secretly, or was her faith in his survival absolute?

By now his electronic warfare officer had climbed in the rear seat. They could not see each other but communicated by live mike. He fired up the left engine, moving the throttle forward and watching the rpm and exhaust gas temperature gauges rise. When the left engine reached idle, he started the right one and switched to internal electrical power. The ground crew pulled away the support vehicles beneath the plane. He reached up and chunked the canopy shut. Signaling back and forth with the ground crew, he tested the speed brakes, flaps, and ailerons. The crewman gave him the thumbs-up. The sun had climbed over the tree line on the horizon, burning off moisture, leveling a hard slant of heat across the streaked expanse of the airfield. His wingman was ready now, too.

"Two up."

"Three ready."

He taxied briskly along the runway. At the head of the runway a serviceman ducked under the fuselage and activated the bomb racks and missiles.

"Blue one ready for takeoff," he told the tower.

"Blue one cleared."

He signaled his wingman and pressed the throttle, running the engine up from idle to one hundred percent power—10,200 rpm. The airspeed indicator needle jumped to fifty knots, and then he moved the throttles outward and forward to the afterburner stop. Maximum power, jet fuel exploding in the exhaust nozzle. Give me everything, he prayed, let's fuck the sky. The plane jolted forward, the runway flashed past. The wheels thudded over the line of cement—football field lengths shooting beneath him—and then the nose gear quieted, lifted, and the plane arced skyward. He pulled the flaps up and again the plane lurched forward, the airspeed needle climbing past three hundred knots. The pneumatic system whistled as the plane groaned and banged and shuddered its way up to speed, the two immense engines feeding a roaring, cylindrical inferno that pressed the seat against his back. Beneath him, above him, around him, air rushed over the fuselage. Ground fell away. One thousand feet, two thousand, three thousand feet. In the sky.

The four planes joined in a combat spread and vectored north, cruising at forty thousand feet, wingtips ten feet apart. He was so near his wingman he could see the rivets and scratches on the canopy frame, the stenciled emergency markings beneath it. The flight passed into an encompassing cloud rack—four airborne sharks in pale depthlessness. The radio gargled layers and layers of garbage sound: other Air Force radio conversations, the mocking and occasionally confusing interruption of Hanoi women broadcasters (false coordinates, insults, sexual taunts—all in a sneering, provocative voice), and the screeching static of North Vietnamese ground technicians trying to jam the frequencies. The noises tore through one another, became louder and softer, choppy, windy, punctuated by blasts of music and faraway unintelligible voices.

The clouds cleared, and seven miles below stretched a landscape of flooded rice paddies, shattered mirrors of the sky, fed by a river that wound lazily like the ever-switching tail of a cat. Above them stretched a ceiling of cirrostratus.

"Blue lead," came the ground air controller, "this is Red Crown. Bandits at two-four-oh degrees, thirty-two miles."

"Roger," he said into the helmet mike. "Blue flight, make a ten-degree turn south, let them chase us."

"Blue lead, Blue two. SAMs at forty degrees, five miles."

"Right." The North Vietnamese were throwing up resistance to drive them south, make them waste fuel.

"Blue lead, this is Red Crown. Three SAMs up ahead."

"Bandits must be in contact with the ground."

"You have an altitude on SAM, two?"

"Eighteen thousand."

Setting up a SAM envelope, chasing them into it. The SAM detonation settings would be varied to explode over a wide range.

"Blue lead, MiGs seven o'clock, eight miles."

"Roger."

"I've got three up ahead, Blue lead."

"Blue lead, make a
hard
turn north. You have SAM coming at you five thousand feet and closing." He pulled on the stick and the jet veered to the north. He saw a flight of MiGs above and behind him. The SAMs were exploding harmlessly a mile back.

"Bandits high." The flight came out of its turn. He had to decide whether to press on toward the bridge, still fifty miles away, or engage the MiGs, which hovered behind them like black mosquitoes with red wing stripes. They were close to air-to-air range.

"Blue lead, I've got four SAM launches."

He could see the SAMs, white telephone poles rising in a long curve directly in front of him.

"MiGs closing."

"Blue lead, you have two MiGs on your—"

He saw them coming, and also saw a SAM rising up in front of him. The North Vietnamese ground technicians knew their exact altitude by now, had reprogrammed the SAMs' detonation height. A direct hit could turn a plane into a million pieces of burnt metal, pattering like rain into the forest. He climbed, and the SAM exploded four hundred feet beneath him.

The MiGs were close. "Blue lead, you have—"

"I see them!"

The closer MiG fired. He went into a hard dive. The heat-seeking missile followed him. The G's were staggering. He tightened his leg muscles to force the blood back to his brain. He grunted. It was coming—a roaring, weaving, smoke-trailing dart that altered its course every time he did. His peripheral vision went black, he couldn't see. The airframe would buckle at 7.33 G's. He flew by feel, the plane vibrating. The missile had to be within fifty yards now. He cut sharply out of the dive, breathed once, twice. The missile had sailed past. His vision came back, he looked for his wingman. But as he completed his turn, the radio cried, "SAM! SAM!—" and a roar of light enveloped the right side of the jet.

The plane jolted, the fire panel lit up.

Get altitude!
The fire was in the bombing electronics panel. He hit the armament release button, cleaning off the plane by sixteen thousand pounds. The bomb racks dropped earthward.

"Blue lead, you're on fire. Wing damage visible."

The plane lurched, and he pulled on the stick to get control. If the wing twisted back violently, the plane would start spinning, and that would be the end. But if he ejected here and made it to the ground alive, he'd be checking into the Hanoi Hilton. The hits didn't seem close to the fuel lines, so lighting the afterburner was not a bad bet. On the other hand, the faster speed would increase the stress on the damaged wing. He'd take the chance.

"Blue flight," he said, "engage burner, switch to emergency procedure. I'm going to try to haul out as far as I can. Two, get RESCAP on the radio, tell them what's happening."

He switched to the intercom to talk with his backseater. "Larry, I'll ride this, get us a better ditch spot."

"I'm with you."

He lit the burner. The plane jammed forward. Yes, he thought, blast me out of here, burn me home. The shimmering torch appeared in the tail of the plane next to him. Here we go. Then three red lights blinked on. The hydraulics were losing pressure, leaks in the primary and redundant systems. Without them, he couldn't maneuver the plane. He was flying an unguided plane at a thousand knots an hour, a roaring perversion.

"Blue flight. Hydraulics gone. Check ground position. I'll be punching out." The jungle rushed beneath him. He felt for the ejection ring between his thighs, so placed because in a falling plane the increased G-forces made it impossible for a pilot to raise his arms.

"Blue lead. RESCAP notified."

"Get ready, Larry." The main panel went dead. Primary electrical system out. Perhaps he'd passed over into the DMZ. The stick froze in his hands. The fire was moving internally through the fuselage. Was South Vietnam below? If so, he had a chance. He couldn't recognize the mountain formations. Estimated speed Mach 1.1 and slowing. Six seconds a mile. The ground below blurred by.

"Blue lead, Blue lead, your wing is breaking up. Get out." He felt the plane go sloppy. Slowing. Hold. Just hold. South past the DMZ. Every six seconds . . . they were losing speed, don't spin, don't spin, he counted one, two, three, four . . . you had to duck during ejection, design fault, tall men sometimes decapitated . . . eight . . . don't flail on ejection, easy to break arms . . . nine—

"Charlie, get the fuck—"

He blew the canopy. Then ejected—into a wall of wind he hit at four hundred knots, driving his heart into his spine, jamming his shoulders against the seatback, compressing his trachea, the air burning over the exposed skin at his wrist and neck, spinning him heels over head. The roar, the silence. His blood could not catch up with his spinning body, his guts were in his mouth. Still moving a hundred knots. His ejection seat dropped off, and the parachute riffled noisily above him. Straps tightened around his chest and thighs, he took quick breaths in the thin air, felt his heart catching up. Okay, okay. A mile away the Phantom dropped in a violent spin, a long plume behind it. He looked around for his backseater, who had ejected simultaneously. Where's the chute? he wondered. C'mon. He looked between his feet and saw a flailing, helmeted figure below him, still strapped to the ejection seat, falling like a stone. Negative chute on Larry. Jesus.