Strike Eagle Read Online Free PDF Page B

was as high as in a sauna.
    Jet engines roared behind him. From the deep pitch it sounded like a C-5, one of the giant transports that flew into Clark. Without any wind, the heat was even more unbearable. He could see the colonel, waiting by the staff car, hands on hips—ready to have Bruce’s butt for flying upside down on final approach.
    Bruce felt a gentle push against his back. Charlie spoke urgently. “Let’s move ... I gotta go.”
    Charlie squeezed around him at the top of the stairs, holding his helmet in one hand and his flight bag in the other. Unfastened from the helmet, Charlie’s mask bounced against the stairs, looking like a miniature elephant’s trunk as it dangled free.
    Bruce swung his flight bag up and followed. As he climbed down the stairs he noticed that a small crowd had gathered around Skipper’s fighter, Maddog One. They stood watching Bruce’s aircraft.
    Oh well, thought Bruce. It’s not like I haven’t been chewed out before.  
    He braced himself for the tirade to come. It was something he had learned to endure at the Air Force Academy—thank God he had gotten something out of the arduous training. He had a dim memory of his fourth-class, or freshman year. Doolies, they had called them, meaning slaves, in Greek. The first year had been bad enough, but the worst was Hell Week—a seventy-two-hour period that made every doolie wish he were dead. It had begun with a special ceremony. The doolies had been ordered to wear their sharpest dress uniforms and line up in a row in the hall with their noses to the wall. After what seemed to be an hour, the strains of Also sprach Zarathustra —the 2001 theme—rumbled down the hall, accompanied by the sound of marching upperclassmen.
    The command was given—”Fourthclassmen, about face!”—and the screaming started. Each doolie had been assigned a special “mentor”—an upperclassman whose sole purpose in life was to ensure that the doolie’s life was made as miserable as possible during Hell Week.
    Except that Bruce’s mentor was nowhere to be seen. Still looking straight ahead and oblivious to the shouting around him, Bruce momentarily thought that they had forgotten him. After all, as a starting defensive back for the varsity football team as a freshman, Bruce had not seen much of the usually unavoidable hazing.
    Then Bruce remembered that the meanest upperclassman had also been the shortest.
    Bruce looked down—right into the eyes of Cadet First Class Ping. Standing barely five feet tall, Cadet Ping glared up at Bruce. “Well, Steele, it is about time you look down. Now you really going to eat shit!”
    The experience had been a coda to an already formidable year, but it had prepared him for the blastings to come. To be indifferent, not to take it personally, and not to crack.
    So no matter how bad this colonel was, Bruce knew that the sun was going to rise tomorrow morning.
    Really.
    Charlie was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. As Bruce turned he kept a stony face, then they started for the colonel, fifty feet away. Bruce was taller than Charlie by a good six inches, but they fell into step as they left the plane. It was something every military man naturally dropped into, even if they tried to stay out of step—phase-locking, the phenomenon was called, just as pendulum clocks located across a room would start beating together.
    “Afternoon, sir,” saluted Charlie. His voice sounded pleasant, masking any emotion he might have felt.
    The colonel let them stand at attention, holding the salute. His name tag was now visible—bolte, read Bruce.
    Slowly he removed his glasses. His blond hair fit the rest of the man perfectly: blue eyes, a deep tan, and a wiry build. He had a fighter pilot’s look about him, decided Bruce—cautious, almost catlike.
    “Just … what … in … the … hell are you trying to do, young man? Buy the farm … before you even land?”
    The question was rhetorical. Bruce and Charlie still