Read Online A Time to Die by Mark Wandrey - Free Book Online

safety crew flashed the thumbs up and he started the ignition sequence. As the glass cockpit came to life — he watched the starboard engine spin up and fall into normal operations ranges. A light went out indicating the ground crew had removed the external power. A man stood in front with crossed red batons, indicating he was still chocked. Once Andrew was certain everything was running normally, he cross-linked the starboard engine and started the port. It too came up flawlessly and he gave the thumbs up to the man out front.
    The crossed batons became two held straight up. The chocks were clear. Andrew released the brake and felt her start to roll. The man back at a slow walk, gesturing with the batons until Andrew was clear of the flight line, then pointed them both twice to the right. Andrew began his turn as the man saluted him, and he returned it in kind. He was on his own.
    “Riyadh Ground Control,” he called out and began relaying information.
    Ten minutes later, after waiting for a pair of C-130s to lumber in to the air, Andrew lined up and slid the throttles forward. A hundred thousand pounds of thrust smashed him into the seat as the fighter shot down the runway. He followed protocol and rolled at least twice as far as he needed to before gently lifting off and retracting his gear. He cleared the end of the outer marker at just over four hundred knots and climbing at a leisurely two thousand feet per minute. He sighed contently. This was where he belonged!
    By the time he’d been in the air for a half hour, the F/A-18D had reached 30,000 feet and was traveling two hundred and seventy-eight degrees magnetic at just under Mach 1. Andrew trimmed the speed through the computer to optimize fuel economy, double checked both engines performance, and broke out his tablet computer. The avionics computer said it would be six hours before he rendezvoused with the KC-135 tanker over the northern Atlantic Ocean.
     

 
     
    Chapter 8
    Monday, April 16
     
    “I’m fine, God damn it!” Vance bellowed at the nurse who was checking his vitals for the ninth time since that morning.
    “The doctor will make that determination, Mr. Cartwright.”
    Vance sighed and allowed her to take his temperature and scribble on a notepad before leaving him alone in the twilight lit hospital room. The truth was he felt anything but fine. He had almost no memory of how he had ended up in the hospital, of how Ann found him in a fetal position, Lexus sitting next to him whining like a puppy because daddy had taken the happy bus to la-la land.
    “Traumatic catatonia,” the doctors told him when he came around. Ann was almost catatonic with fear for him herself, and Vance didn’t blame her. They were still trying to come to grips with being pregnant, and he loses it over some video? He’d been lucky enough that the connection had timed out. He could hardly think about what he’d seen without feeling icy fingers crawling up his spine. He didn’t want to think about her seeing that video, especially with what was growing inside her. But think about it he did. Now that his mind had coped with the initial shock and his emotional state was stable (well, more stable), he was logically considering it.
    Could that have been a hoax? Without access to a computer and the hordes of expert friends on Facebook and other sources, there was no way to be sure. Did he think it was a hoax? Absolutely not. It would require a Hollywood special effects house days or weeks of work to do that, and it had all the hallmarks of a live stream.
    Lightning played across the San Antonio skyline and he turned his head to watch. A titanic struggle was developing in the heavens. He didn’t get any more sleep before morning when Ann showed up to get him.
     
    * * *
     
    The RHIB from the Coast Guard cutter U.S.S. Boutwell circled the oil platform once as the personnel on board tried to see what was going on inside. Lieutenant Junior-Grade Grange looked through her field