A Private Little War(118)
There was no response, but everyone followed him as he leaped on the shortest radial for the return flight. On the ground, the natives were getting their asses handed to them. They were experiencing hand grenades, learning about the wrong ends of rifles, discovering land mines in the worst possible way, all courtesy of the Lassateirra indigs and their NRI friends inside Riverbend. Fenn was too high to see the worst of it, and he’d been glad for that.
HOT-1: Porter, talk to me.
HOT-2: One-two to spotter, requesting permission to break and investigate.
HOT-1: We are fighter cover, one-two. Bombers are on their way. Come up to five thousand and form up. Now.
RAM: [Static. Increased engine sound]
HOT-1: Investigate what?
HOT-2: Fucked if I know.
HOT-2: Lefty?
HOT-3: Can’t see it.
HOT-1: Lefty, this is Fenn. Talk to me.
HOT-3: [Unintelligible]
HOT-1: Bad Dog, repeat. What did you see?
HOT-2: Coming back, one-eight-zero degrees. Idiot. Fuck, Lefty. Break and come back.
HOT-1: Somebody say something useful, please? One-two, I have visual of you. Break and come around and ascend to five thousand.
HOT-3: There!
HOT-1: Porter, get him back now or I’m going to shoot his dumb ass down myself.
HOT-2: Copy that, spotter.
HOT-2: Hear him, Lefty? Think he’s fucking around? Not today, if we…
HOT-3: There! There! Guns in the field. Repeat, weapons on the field. I’m passing over right now. Directly below me.
HOT-2: No way. How could they… Spotter! You copy, Fenn?
RDO-2: One-two inbound, did you [unintelligible]
RDO-?: [Unintelligible] (Sound of struggle?)
HOT-1: I copy you, flight leader.
HOT-2: Did you…
HOT-1: I heard him. Can you confirm?
RDO-?:… Off the fucking thing… Hold him!
HOT-1: Porter! Can you confirm?
Ted came through the door to the comms tent at a dead run, shouldering his way through and cracking the thin wood at the frame, never slowing down. He ran until he hit the radio boards and then clubbed Jimmy McCudden right out of his chair with his forearm. Tore the headphones off him by the wire.
Diane saw it all from the tower seat. She screamed when Ted hit the door, but she didn’t have her microphone keyed. For just a second, she thought they were being invaded, and it’d been like all of her nightmares were coming true.
Jimmy fell out of his chair. He’d been talking. Diane tried to fix all of these details in her mind in case they became important later. Ted had hit Jimmy from behind, swinging his arm like a bat. Jimmy fell into Shun Le, who was coordinating ground traffic and taxi orders. She yelled, too. Diane was on her feet, her microphone off, and she tried to shush Shun Le because she was in charge—lead controller—and there wasn’t supposed to be any talking on the radio line that wasn’t integral to each controller’s duties. People got distracted so easily. They lost track of what was important. So Diane tried to shush Shun Le. She stood up and she waved her hands.
But Shun Le wasn’t listening.
Ted was yelling at Jimmy: “Get off the fucking thing!” And he was yanking at the headphone wire.
Shun Le was saying that she’d had just about enough of this shit and was going to file a complaint.
In the air, the pilots were all shouting at each other. A flight—the bombers—were on the wrong radial and having to duck down below the lowering cloud base to get themselves straightened out.
And Diane was laughing. She was laughing at Shun Le because she knew there was no one left to file a complaint to. She’d overheard enough from the pilots—in particular the ones who never even noticed she was there; the ones who, after two years, didn’t even know her name. She’d listened to them talk. She’d watched the Ted-and-Eddie show often enough and had placed many of Eddie’s early-morning calls on the secure uplink. Maybe she hadn’t always switched her channel as quickly as she ought to. Maybe she knew more than anyone thought she did. Like she knew for sure that no one was going to listen to any harassment complaint from little Miss Shun Le Harper, who was always finding something to scowl about anyhow. To make faces at.
So Diane laughed. She also thought it was funny because she’d never heard Shun Le say “shit” before. So proper, that one. So quiet, most of the time.
Ted was saying her name. Diane shook her head.
“Hold him!” Ted snapped, meaning Jimmy, who’d never done anything mean to anybody. Who’d never said a cross word. And for an instant, Diane thought about kicking Ted instead.
“No way,” she said back. “Everyone stop yelling right now!”
Ted’s face was mottled. There was a crust of something at the corner of his mouth that looked like blood. His hair was mussed. Like a boy, like an idiot, he’d been out on the field, running around and playing with the airplanes when he should’ve been inside coordinating. Leading. That was his job. He smelled of cold and exhaust and fuel. Diane had no doubt he’d been getting in everyone’s way, trying to help but doing just the opposite. Like a boy.