Shattered Bone Read Free Page B

If she were careful and did exactly as she had been told, none of the tragedy would affect her directly.
    Airman Derby walked up to her aircraft and gently patted its nose. This one was her baby. Aircraft number 87-341 had not flown the night before because of a faulty generator and Airman Derby had spent the morning troubleshooting, trying to find the source of the problem. Around ten o’clock, she had discovered a fault in one of the relays. Once she knew what the problem was, she could have fixed it within an hour. But she didn’t. Instead she tinkered and puttered around, always trying to look busy. She had to delay until the evening flying schedule was posted at twelve o’clock. She had to check on something before she completed the job and called her aircraft back in the green and ready to fly.
    Just before noon, she left her toolbox by the aircraft and walked into the hangar that housed Maintenance Control. There she found the newly posted evening schedule, written in bright red marker on a large sheet of Plexiglas mounted on the hallway wall. Derby quickly scanned the schedule, looking for her aircraft. She found it on the eighth line down. Aircraft number 87-341 was scheduled for a 23:38 local takeoff. It would be loaded with four Mark 82 bombs and two sidewinder missiles. Its pilot was Capt Richard Ammon.
    That was what she needed to know. After checking the schedule, Airman Derby stopped by her locker to get her lunch. She also picked up a small package containing a box of cigarettes. Derby had only recently begun to smoke, a nasty habit for which she seemed to take unending guff from her supervisor, but though still a rookie, she had learned early to keep her cigarettes inside a tin box to protect them from being crushed as she crawled around the aircraft. Stuffing the tin of cigarettes into her front pocket, she closed her locker door and began to walk back to her jet.
    Forty-five minutes later, she finished the work on the faulty generator. She then began to replace the aluminum panels that covered the aircraft’s electrical systems. When that was complete, she took an inventory of all her tools. If anything was missing, she would have to ground the aircraft until the missing tool could be found. More than one accident had been caused by a missing pair of pliers or a screwdriver that had been left behind, only to get jammed in an aircraft’s flight controls.
    When Derby had accounted for all of her tools, she walked around the entire jet, opening access panels and doors to ensure that everything was in order.
    The last thing Airman Derby did was climb on top of the aircraft and open the slip door that covered the air refueling receptacle. But before she climbed onto her jet, she glanced up and down the flight line to make certain that her supervisor was not around. Then, with a quick jump she climbed onto the fighter’s wing and stepped over to the fuselage to where she could reach the small door that covered the air refueling port. Before pushing the door open with her left hand, she glanced around once again.
    Working quickly, she pulled the tin of cigarettes out of her pocket and peeled back the wrapper with her teeth, exposing a strong adhesive which she used to attach the tin box to the inside of the slip door. Then, very slowly, she removed the last cigarette from the tin box. This activated a tiny switch which armed two ounces of plastique explosives. The explosives would remain armed until the slip door was opened during flight for air refueling. Once the door slid open, micro-sensors inside the box would sense the change in air pressure and send a fire signal to the explosives.
    And while two ounces of plastique explosives were hardly enough to down an F-16, she had been assured that, given the close proximity of the explosives to the aircraft’s fuel system, it would more than do the job.
    Airman Derby looked around once more before allowing the door to spring closed, then