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WOODY AND SPECTRE LED Sparky and Kruger back to the secret base and then acted as a chase aircraft for him as he landed. Despite having lost consciousness, Sparky was lucid and seemed to be okay. They followed him down to seventy-five feet and watched him touch down uneventfully, before executing a go around and landing.
By the time they taxied to the ramp and parked next to Sparky’s jet, Sparky and Kruger were already in the hangar removing their gear. Spectre and Woody hurried through their shutdown checklists and quickly took their off their gear. Spectre ran to join Sparky as Kruger escorted him to the waiting Gulfstream.
“Really, I’m fine,” Sparky said as Spectre caught up with them. “I just wasn’t on top of my G-strain.”
“It’s just a precaution,” Spectre said. “Let the flight docs at Nellis check you out. This is standard procedure.”
“I’m fine,” Sparky insisted, shaking his head.
Kruger and Spectre exchanged a look as Jenny stepped out of the aircraft to help Sparky up the stairs. He shrugged off her assistance and made his way into the forward-most executive leather chair and fastened his seatbelt.
Kruger and Spectre took their seats as Jenny returned to the cockpit and finished her preflight checks with her co-pilot. A few minutes later, they were airborne for the short flight to Nellis Air Force Base.
Spectre called ahead and coordinated for an appointment with the chief of aerospace medicine. After the quick fifteen-minute flight, they landed and found the Wing Executive Officer waiting with a car to take them to the appointment.
The three men piled out of the Ford Fusion and walked right into the medical clinic to see the flight surgeon. To the untrained eye, they looked like any other fighter pilots stationed on base. They were wearing combat patches that gave no specific unit and major’s rank on their shoulders.
“You’ll have to wait outside,” a nurse told Spectre and Kruger as they tried to go into the exam room with Sparky.
There was a small secondary waiting room inside the flight medicine section of the clinic. It was empty as Spectre and Kruger took their seats while Judge Judy blared on the TV above them.
“You know he’s done, right?” Kruger asked in a low voice.
“What do you mean?” Spectre asked. He knew exactly what Kruger was getting at, but didn’t want to admit it.
“We almost became a smoking hole in the desert today,” Kruger whispered. “Something’s not right with him. He’s not coming back.”
“GLOC could happen to anyone,” Spectre argued. “We just flew across the world and then asked these guys to flip their body clocks and fly three sorties in one day. He was probably just tired.”
“Woody didn’t seem to have a problem.”
Spectre shrugged. “Everyone is different. Hell, I started to gray out a little in the backseat when he did his break turn.”
Kruger shook his head. “He didn’t just gray out though. He was lights out. Hell, I saw him have a seizure or something in the front seat before he finally came to.”
“Ahh...The funky chicken.”
“Funky chicken?”
“Yeah, that’s what they call it during the centrifuge training when you GLOC. You lose blood flow to your brain and when it comes back, everything just kind of resets. It causes muscles to spasm and flail.”
“Well, whatever it was, he’d be dead right now if I hadn’t been in the backseat with him. And that won’t work in country. You know what this means, bub,” Kruger said.
“It means we need to wait and see what the doc says and then we can talk about what it means.”
Kruger grunted, folded his arms, and pretended to watch the TV. It was thirty minutes after Sparky first entered the exam room, before the flight surgeon finally walked out.
“I’m Colonel Wynn,” the flight surgeon said as he approached carrying Sparky’s patient chart. “Based on the phone call I received, I understand this is a pretty high priority case. Which of you is in charge?”
“It is,” Kruger answered. “And we’re both in charge.”
“Fair enough, well, I’m afraid we’re going to need to do more tests on Major Lynch. He told me he was involved in an automobile accident and I’d like to rule out intracranial hemorrhaging.”
“How likely is that, sir?” Spectre asked.
Colonel Wynn frowned. “I’d say it’s more likely than not, based on my initial exam. But I can’t say for certain without doing imaging.”
“When can he do it?” Kruger asked.
“Right now, actually,” Colonel Wynn replied. “He’s being prepped as we speak. Based on the priority that the general gave me, I put it in as a Tier One request. I should have the results within the next two hours.”
“So, do we wait here, or can we go with him, or what?” Spectre asked.
“There’s nothing you can do for him,” Colonel Wynn said before looking at his watch. “You may want to go get lunch somewhere on base and be back in an hour. You have time.”
“We’ll wait,” Kruger said.
Spectre nodded in agreement.
“Suit yourself,” Colonel Wynn said. “Wait here, and I’ll have the nurse come get you when we have a definitive answer.”
“Thank you,” Spectre said.
They returned to their chairs in the waiting area. Spectre looked at Kruger. “He’s going to be fine.”
“Doesn’t sound likely, bub,” Kruger said. “But, we’ll wait for the results. And then...”
“And then what?”
“And then we need to talk about Plan B.”
“There is no Plan B,” Spectre said. “You said so yourself, remember? Five days and all that. Without Sparky, we’re done. We are fucked.”
“No, we’re not,” Kruger said.
“What do you mean? These guys are the only ones I trust. Who are we going to find to do this in less than a week?”
“I think you know, bub.”
Spectre’s eyes widened. “Absolutely not. No fucking way. No. That wasn’t part of the deal.”
Kruger slouched in his chair and let his head rest against the wall behind him as he closed his eyes. “Well, then you’re right. We’re fucked and so is everyone else in this country.”
“Goddammit!” Spectre belted out as he stood and kicked over a nearby chair in frustration.