Silent Enemy by Tom Young Page B

come up with anything like this. And now there was no freezing the motion, no taking a break.
    Parson remembered some advice his father had given him when he was still an ROTC cadet. “Some situations require you to think past the books,” the old man had said. “They can’t write a procedure for everything.”
    He spoke from experience, two Vietnam tours in the backseat of an F-4. And while Parson was still in nav school, his father got activated for Desert Storm. One night during a Wild Weasel mission, the old man’s luck ran out.
    Parson wondered what his dad would have said about this. In the old Air Force, they used to say the flight manuals were written in blood, results of lessons learned the hard way. But the books had no guidance whatsoever for something like this.
    The F-15s still shadowed Parson’s Galaxy, piercing the sky with their honed edges. He doubted they had the range to accompany him all the way to Rota, even though they’d just topped off their tanks. He hoped not. They couldn’t do him any good, and they were getting on his nerves. He decided to give them a hint.
    “Gunfighter, Air Evac Eight-Four,” he called.
    “Go ahead, Air Evac.”
    “We have things as under control as they ever will be,” Parson said. “If you’re low on gas, you can RTB.”
    “Roger that, Air Evac. We’ll drop into Barcelona if we have to, but they want us to stay with you as long as we can.”
    Wonderful, Parson thought. And if you keep flying that close to me, you’re gonna suck shards through your intakes when we get blown into scrap metal.
     
     
    GOLD STARED OUT THE COCKPIT WINDOWS, tried to think of what to tell Mahsoud and the others. She could offer little hope now. About all she could say was that the flight engineer had found a bomb and that the aircraft commander was pushing for help. At the moment, Parson was still fiddling with radios. To what end, Gold wasn’t sure.
    She watched Parson turn a knob, press a switch. He wasn’t much of an intellectual, she thought, but the force of life burned strong in that one. He could not seem to accept his situation, or at least he hadn’t yet. If someone told him he’d used up all his nine lives, he’d go to supply and put in for nine more. At the moment, he seemed to want information.
    “Hey,” he said. “I found the BBC’s shortwave service.”
    The crew seemed to be listening intently, so Gold pressed her interphone switch and asked, “How can I hear it?”
    “Pull up HF2 on your comm box,” Parson said.
    Gold hunted for the knob, then pulled it out and turned up the volume. Heard a woman broadcaster with a lilting Scottish accent:
    The U.S. military confirms two of its transport aircraft have been destroyed by what appear to be terrorist bombs. Officials say at least fifteen lives were lost. There are unconfirmed reports that other American aircraft may still be aloft with bombs on board.
    The aircraft bombings follow this morning’s massive truck bombing at the Afghan National Police training center in Kabul. That attack left ninety people dead and more than twice that many injured. In a video released to Pakistani news agencies, a Taliban spokesman claims credit for both the police center bombing and the aircraft incidents. The Taliban says conspirators within the police helped get the truck bomb past checkpoints.
     
    The last sentence of the news report sickened Gold. Corruption had long been rife within the ANP, but she had wanted to believe things were getting better. She wondered if the Taliban had enough hard-core supporters within the ANP to pull off something like this. It was possible, but more likely they just bribed people. The U.S. and UN had poured millions of dollars into building up Afghan security forces. Advisers, mentorship teams, equipment, training. And some Judas takes it all down for thirty pieces of silver.
    Gold noticed Parson looking at her. When she met his eyes, he shook his head, glanced down at the flight deck floor