2010 - Fly By Wire by Ward Larsen

Author:Ward Larsen [Larsen, Ward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Midpoint Trade Books
Published: 2010-09-06T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The bar menu had a decidedly European tilt. Davis and Sorensen both skipped the special of the day, seaweed and oyster tartare, and neither gave a thought to ordering snails. He went with the salmon bagel, while she settled on onion soup.

“So that file you have on me,” Davis asked, “what’s in it?”

Sorensen dipped a crusty piece of bread into her soup. “It said you put your fist through a wall at an officer’s club.”

“That was in there?” He shrugged it off.

Sorensen gave him a look that asked for more. Perhaps a reasonable explanation.

“I was at a dining in,” he said.

“A dining in?”

“It’s a formal military banquet where the whole fighter wing gets dressed up in our best uniforms. We do guy stuff—eat meat, drink bourbon, smoke cigars. On the night in question, some of my squadron buddies and I were having a stud-finding contest. I lost.”

Sorensen took the bait. “Okay—and what does the winner get in this event?”

“A broken hand.”

She paused, but then moved on without comment. “The file said you spent three years in the Marines, then got an appointment to the Air Force Academy. Why did you switch services?”

“The Marine Corps is a great organization, but I wanted to fly jets. The Air Force seemed the most likely place. Plus I was a little tired of living in dusty tents and eating MREs.”

“And you shot down a MiG in the first Gulf War?”

“Yeah, I was flying F-15s at the time. My wingman and I tracked down a MiG-23 that was headed for Iran. Saddam thought his jets would be safer there.”

“I guess you proved him wrong.”

“I guess.”

“So it was a dogfight? Just like in the old movies?”

“You mean like with the wind snapping at my scarf, maybe shaking my fist at the other guy? No. The real thing is very clinical, very quick. And usually very one-sided. The Iraqi pilot had been ordered up on what was basically a suicide mission—his commander told him to fly a jet to Iran before we blew it out of its bunker. He got airborne and was running away at six hundred knots. I chased him down doing six-eighty, put a heater up the poor bastard’s tailpipe. Bottom line, we both had jobs to do and gave it our best—but my airplane, missiles, and information were a lot better. So I killed a guy in a fight that wasn’t fair.”

“In combat I suppose that’s how you want all your fights,” she said.

He shrugged.

She said, “I remember reading a report a few years back—it said a lot of those Iraqi pilots who actually made it across the border were never heard from again.”

“Which means what? That I gave his family a little … closure or something?”

Sorensen said nothing.

Davis spread mustard on his bagel. He had an urge to change the subject. “So tell me what you found out about our Egyptian friend.”

“Dr. Jaber? Nothing troublesome. At least not yet. He’s a career engineer, sort of a vagabond. He’s worked for a number of the big aerospace companies.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.