No parent wants their kid to go to war, especially in a spy plane the US government bought on eBay. By the time the Afghan war really got going, the available planes were simply too fast to perform the mind-numbing task of staring at people, places, and rocks for hours on end. The government found a solution on the civilian market in the form of the Beechcraft King Air 350, a twin-engine turboprop that could loiter on station for hours without having to refuel. At the same time, several rich businessmen in Las Vegas were looking to offload their private turboprops to either make alimony payments or upgrade to an actual jet so no one mistook them for being poor.
So, the Air Force bought the eBay planes, painted them gray, stripped them down entirely, loaded on hundreds of pounds of intelligence and communication equipment, and left four seats for the crew of two pilots, a sensor operator, and an intelligence analyst. It was the sensor operator who screamed into the intercom on final approach into Bagram Airfield.
No one was sure what was happening until the scream. There was a rattling sound like when you kick up gravel driving offroad. There were a couple of sparks, metal on metal. Sergeant Stokes screamed.
“Jink, jink, jink!” Specialist Ryan, the intel analyst, shouted from the back as soon as he came to the realization they were under fire. He looked past the racks of computers and power supplies down the aisle to Stokes in the sensor’s seat. There was blood all over his lap and dripping into the aisle. The pilot, Lieutenant Todd, started rolling the plane left and right as he thought back to a course on basic fighter maneuvers when his career was on track to fly something whose military designation started with an F.
“Bagram, Daytona zero six, taking fire, request emergency landing, straight in approach,” Chief Wilson, the mission commander, stated calmly.
“Daytona zero six, you are cleared to land,” said an even calmer Bagram tower.
Sergeant Stokes was not nearly as calm. Everyone could hear his heavy breathing over the intercom. As soon as Todd aborted his fighter maneuvers, Ryan unbuckled, and crouch walked the short distance to Stokes’s seat to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling.
“Hey, I’m at Sam now,” Ryan said. “Bleeding pretty bad. We’re going off comms so you guys can talk to the tower.”
“Affirm,” Wilson said.
There were several small holes where sunlight was beaming in. One hole was in a large puddle of dark blood just below the sensor operator’s seat. There was a nasty wound to his right thigh. Ryan removed Sam’s headset and they had to shout at each other over the engine noise.
“It fucking hurts,” the sergeant yelled.
“Yeah, no shit,” Ryan yelled back. He felt around for a lump in the ankle pocket of Stokes’s flight suit that would indicate a Combat Application Tourniquet. Bagram command required all soldiers to carry a CAT in their ankle pocket just in case. “Where’s your CAT?!”
“I don’t carry that thing, man!”
“Fuck, me either,” Ryan said. He put his headset back on. “You guys got a tourniquet?” Ryan asked the pilots.
“No,” they both responded in unison.
“Check the first aid bag,” Lieutenant Todd said.
Ryan moved to the back of the plane and found the nylon bag with the red cross on it. He assumed it had never been opened, but inside he found several dozen airplane bottles of various high-end Kentucky bourbons, loaded spare magazines for M9 pistols, and a couple of Red Bulls.
“You’re fucking joking,” Ryan said on the intercom. “It’s just booze. Damn tail nine,” he said referring to the last digit of the tail number. “Of all the fucking days to be on tail nine.”
Tail nine was a closely guarded secret among certain members of the US Army. The plane was used to store contraband so that if it was found by the high-ranking people, everyone would have plausible deniability. A lot of people came and went during missions and maintenance. Anyone could be hiding whiskey in plain sight.
Ryan made his way back to the sensor operator’s station and took off his belt. “It’s tail nine, there ain’t a CAT!” He shouted to Stokes. “We’ll use my belt.”
Ryan wrapped the nylon belt around Stokes’s upper thigh and cinched it down to make a tourniquet.
“Hang in there!” Ryan yelled.
Stokes was still breathing heavily when the plane cleared the perimeter of Bagram and made its way over the runway.
“We’re fucked!” Stokes yelled.
“You’ll be fine!”
“No, I mean, yeah my leg’s fucked, but we’re fucked. Todd don’t know about tail nine!”
Stokes was right. Lieutenant Todd was commissioned and, worse, Air Force. He had overheard the comment about the booze and was not read on to the Army’s nefarious activities.
The plane touched down hard and Ryan, who was not buckled in for landing, slid forward into the blood. They didn’t taxi to the parking area. Ryan opened the door, and an ambulance was waiting on the runway with its lights on. The flight doc was there along with his medic and two other medics from the airfield hospital. Ryan slid out of the way, careful to hide the first aid bag from their sight, and two medics came on board and awkwardly carried Stokes down the airstair and to the back of the ambulance.
Ryan closed the door and Todd throttled up to begin taxiing. Chief Wilson gave the 25-year-old Stokes a thumbs up from the commander’s seat and the sergeant saw it and saluted unenthusiastically from his new spot on a stretcher.
At the parking area, Ryan removed all the hard drives in his analyst’s data rack and kicked the first aid bag through the blood on the floor. In his own thoughts, he was sure no one would touch a bloody bag or even ask questions if he stashed it somewhere. He gathered the bag up along with his hard drives and, as usual, the civilian mechanic opened the door for him. The Afghan sun was always bright in the dark aircraft. Most of the windows had been covered up by equipment and each man had a viewport that could be opened or closed.
To the mechanic, Specialist David Ryan was a sorry sight. His flight suit was covered in blood and so were his hands. Splotches on his face made him look more like a trauma doc than the tall, lanky, blond-haired college dropout he was. There was no fist bump today, the usual greeting for returning aircrew. The mechanic looked troubled, an unusual mood for someone who looked like Jerry Garcia in the 1980s and was generally always pleasant. At first, Ryan thought maybe the blood, now trickling down the airstair, was the cause of the mechanic’s troubles, but then he remembered someone would have to fix the fuselage which shouldn’t have any holes in it.
“Rough day?” The mechanic asked.
Ryan just gave a half smile and held the bloody bag of contraband closer. Chief Wilson was the next guy to get off the plane.
“Sam gonna be okay?” He asked.
“Hope so,” Ryan replied.
“Drop that bag in the dumpster behind the mail shack,” Wilson said and gave Ryan a pat on the back. “I’ll handle the lieutenant.”
Ryan said nothing and began the walk back to the flight operations office before Todd deplaned. There was no one to greet him on the way. The dust-covered tarmac stretched to the razor wire wrapped perimeter and, beyond that, to some asshole with a machine gun. The sun was just past its peak and the afternoon in June would be sweltering. The shipping container turned mail room was just outside flight operations, so Ryan made a trip around the back to the dumpster, looked for spies, and threw the bag inside. It was night shift’s problem.
Flight ops was unusually quiet. They had, no doubt, heard the news and the Air Force captain manning the ops desk had nothing to say except, “You okay?”
“I don’t know,” Ryan said and made a gesture that confirmed his statement. He walked up the metal stairs to the second, secured, top secret clearance only, floor and transferred his hard drive data and awaited the debrief.
“Sorry,” said the analyst manning the intel desk.
Ryan shrugged. Chief Wilson and Lieutenant Todd walked in and gathered around the large map table for the standard mission debrief.
“Obviously,” began Todd, “We are all praying for Sergeant Stokes. David, good job on calling the jink. I have never taken small arms fire before, but it seemed to stop on executing the maneuver which I think I performed adequately given the limitations of the aircraft.” Todd was tall, thin, and handsome. He wore only his undershirt any time he could get away with it. This showed off his biceps and shoulders. His flight suit top had adjustments at the waist so you could take it in, and he did. This gave him a distinguished, tailored look. The fatter pilots never took their waist in. According to his stories he was very popular at the Air Force Academy especially with women. His short dark hair was combed over and pomaded in a way that would make any Hitler Youth proud.
It was no secret to anyone that Lieutenant Todd hated the MC-12, the military designation for the King Air 350. It was not that the MC-12 was a bad aircraft, but it was certainly no fighter plane. Todd was incredibly bitter that the US Air Force plucked him from his F-16 training to fly a “new, exciting, reconnaissance aircraft.” And the MC-12 was certainly a reconnaissance aircraft. In fact, its “M” designation meant it was a multi-role, special operations support asset. Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance could all be conducted at the same time in exchange for air speed, maneuverability, and any crew member’s ability to get laid when a girl inevitably asked to see a picture of their plane.
“Our objective for today was to monitor the movements of Abdul Rahman,” Chief Wilson said in his briefing voice. Nearly everyone in Afghanistan was named Abdul Rahman and no one was quite sure what made this Abdul bad.
“We were to take off, fly heading zero six zero, and orbit over our target’s last known location. On today’s flight, we followed the flight plan and orbited around the designated point and saw absolutely jack shit. Not a man, woman, vehicle, or animal for five fucking hours. Special operations did not designate another task for us after reporting nothing and we flew back to Bagram where one of our crew was shot and our plane rendered unflyable for no fucking reason whatsoever. Good job, gents. Briefing is over.” The tone in Chief Wilson’s voice indicated to everyone that nothing more needed to be said.
Chief Wilson was an older CW3 and that meant his time in the military was limited. If he didn’t make CW4 at the next promotion cycle, they’d find a way to remove him. But Wilson was enlisted before and already had 20 years in service meaning he’d retire either way. The light at the end of Wilson’s Army career tunnel made him dangerous and the bane of the higher-ups. He spoke his mind to anyone who asked and to those who didn’t. He had a beer gut and smoked like a chimney. No one had ever seen him do a PT test, but his scores were always reported as “above average.”
As David was leaving the debrief room, Chief Wilson put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Let’s get dinner tonight at seven.”
Can't wait to find out what they Bottled in Bagram. Maybe alcohol, maybe the unrelenting hate of the US Government. Pre-order now and find out!