Acts of Faith

Douglas

He’s in the pod. The pod is his window unto the world, and the world he sees below is white, with shades of gray and black and blue-gray mixed in. The boom points at it, a long steel finger, fins at a forty-five-degree angle so he can read, on the left fin, the word ARIZ, and on the right, the letters ANG. Not thirty feet below, a dark F-15 floats like a manta ray. He could see the color of the pilot’s eyes if the pilot raised his visor. The fighter plane rises slightly, fuel port open, seeking the boom, as the boom seeks it, the boom wavering in the frigid air, twenty thousand feet above snow, ice, rock. Lying on his stomach, Douglas maneuvers the boom to and fro with the joystick, and then the nozzle finds what it’s looking for, just behind the F-15’s cockpit bubble, and locks in place. Two planes are one now, traveling together at four hundred knots, over the craggy roof of Kurdistan.

“Engaged,” Douglas says into his headset mike. Yes, engaged. Married. It’s impossible not to think of sexual imagery, not to imagine the KC-135 tanker as a gigantic male dragonfly, penetrating its smaller mate, pumping her full.

The F-15 fighter-jock gives a two-fingered salute: two men, twenty-five feet apart, looking at each other through Plexiglas. “Appreciate it if you guys could top me off,” the voice drawls. “Need about ten grand.”

“Sorry,” Douglas says. “Seven is all I can give you. Got four other customers.” He gestures at the other fighters, lined up in echelon off the tanker’s left wing.

Behind him pumps whirr, though he can’t hear them through his earphones. This is a silent place, the pod is. Numbers flash on the digital dial, and when they reach seven thousand pounds, he disengages the boom, and the fighter-jock gives another salute and peels off, twin tailfins and swept wings bristling with missiles slicing through the thin blue skies. Douglas goes with him in his heart. He’s where I should be, he thinks as the next F-15 lines up.

Finally the last one is refueled, slides away, and banks southward.

“That’s it, Bob,” he radios the tanker’s pilot. Things are informal in the Arizona Air National Guard—a crew sergeant can call a captain by his first name.

“Okay, Doug. The Diamondheads are done for the day.” Diamondheads is the nickname of their outfit, the 171st Air Refueling Wing. “Saddam Hussein is contained once again! And it’s back to another fun-filled night in magical Incirlik. C’mon up.”

He crawls out of the pod and into the belly of the aircraft, past the rest of the crew—radar operators, mission specialists—and into the cockpit, where Bob Mendoza is commencing his turn back to Turkey. Lou Engleman, the copilot, is talking to flight operations in Incirlik.

“War is hell,” Bob remarks, turning halfway around in his seat, his captain’s bars two black stripes on his desert tan flight suit. “Three days and a wake-up and home to Phoenix. ‘By the time I get to Phoenix, she’ll be waiting,’ ” he sings. “She’ll be horny too, I hope. Are we empty, Doug?”

“Not a drop left,” he replies, his glance falling covetously on the yoke in Bob’s hands, on the throttles and the instrument array. Altitude thirty thousand. Airspeed four hundred eighty knots. Engine parameters normal. In a little while he’ll be able to fly this airborne gas station, if the National Guard will let him, which it won’t. He’s well into commercial flight school back home and will soon have his multiengine rating.

“I got the scores from the tower,” Engleman says. “Cardinals lost again. Twenty to seven.”

“They shoulda stayed in St. Louis,” Bob declares, shaking his head.

“Triple A!” A voice screams into their headset. “Repeat! Triple A airburst!” A second voice: “You got ’em?” It was the fighter squadron they’d just refueled.”No! Whoa! SAM launch now. SAM missile launch!” Second voice: “Got ’em. Off to the right, right!”

“Holy shit, the real deal,” Bob says. “Doug, get on back, tell me if you see anything. This honey is a big flying target, a big ole X for Saddam’s boys.”

Douglas bounds out of the cockpit, too excited to be scared, and on through the crowded interior, nearly bowling over a lieutenant, and swings himself back into the pod, his window to the world. “Another SAM!” one of the voices shouts. “More triple A!” And he sees, miles to the south, a black cloud of flak appear in the clear heavens, and another, and a third, blooming like an evil flower. A bright ball streaks upward, trailing vapor that fades. Two more, and the bug-size specks of the F-15s peel off to dive. Their missiles flash.

“How’s it look, Doug?” Bob asks him.

He doesn’t answer right away. He’s captivated. It’s all somehow beautiful. The clear sky, the white mountains, the flashes and dark billows appearing and vanishing.

“Some flak, maybe three SAMs that I saw,” he answers, trying to sound laconic and calm. “Didn’t hit anything.”

“Firing blind. Won’t turn their radar on, or they’d get nailed before they pulled the triggers.”

The radio goes silent. The skies are empty once again. It’s over.

“Okay, folks,” Bob announces to the crew. “A little antiaircraft, maybe five SAMs, all out of range. We’re all right.”

Douglas remains in the pod, face pressed to the glass, heart banging against the floor. He wants to see it all again. He doesn’t want it to be over.