Chapter 6: The Real Air Force

The weeks passed and Wedge and Roxie stayed inseparable buddies. They ignored the whispers behind their backs that they were having an affair. In fact, they never heard them. Life in Korea settled into an exciting adventure that neither Wedge nor Roxie expected. Their duty schedule started two hours before the first jets took off. The flying schedule was never the same, so they could go in at 9:00 AM on Monday, 4:00 AM on Tuesday, 1:00 PM on Wednesday, and 5:00 AM on Thursday. Wedge and Roxie normally came in half an hour before their co-workers came in so they could get a good briefing from mid-shift on the condition of the fliers. Sometimes they’d go out and check the planes themselves, and Wedge was a stickler for the weapons systems, especially if there were dropping live bombs.

When the air crews began showing up, Wedge parked his step van in a central position so he could watch the engine starts and the planes head off to the runway. That was usually in the middle of what looked like a runway, but was called the “Central Taxiway.” It probably had a number or name, but the section he parked on wasn’t used by airplanes. Roxie was the “Specialist Expediter” and dispatched electricians, radar specialists, etc., and ended up parked next to Wedge. Wedge’s other weapons expediter was “Doc” Johnson, a tech sergeant that looked and acted like he was seventy-five years old. The truck he was in was Juvat Five.

“Juvat Four, Juvat Super. Need Weapons on spot thirty-six.” Juvat Super was the head guy coordinating the maintenance effort.

“I’m on it,” said Wedge into his radio and waved goodbye to Roxie. Doc responded to calls below spot 18, Wedge responded to calls above 18. Spot thirty-six was on the south side of the central taxiway, it’s far away so he drove faster than he normally would and pulled up to the F-16 that was sitting in the shelter. The aircraft crew chief, a staff sergeant, came up to the truck and said, “He’s out of argon.”

“Tell me you’re shitting me,” said Wedge. The F-16 carries two training missiles, dummy missiles with no rocket motor or explosives, but they have live heat seeking warheads. The missiles use argon to supercool the seeker heads so the pilots can try to lock on to each other. Argon is easily changed out. It’s usually something that happens between missions and is always checked before the flight crew shows up. Mid shift should have caught this last night, and Wedge was fuming.

“Nope, saw it myself,” said the aircraft crew chief. The argon bottle was ball shaped and had a gauge displaying the amount of argon in the bottle. When installed, you could read the needle on the bottle through a little window. Only a blind man could miss that, grumbled Wedge to himself.

“Juvat Four, Juvat Super. Need weapons on Spot 4.” Being the senior expediter, Wedge gets all the calls from Juvat Super and from Job Control, then passes the calls on to Doc in Juvat 5 if needed.

“Juvat Five, Juvat Four,” Wedge called, “can you get that Doc?”

“I’m over at the gun shop,” said Doc answering Wedge’s call for help.

Wedge pretended to believe that Doc was in the gun shop, but the chow hall was a more likely place to find him. Wedge turned around and saw that he had a three-man crew and one “truck bitch” who was usually an airman who assisted Wedge. “Danny,” Wedge called out to the team chief, “Take your three-man and two bottles of Argon and swap out argon on both missiles then stay and fireguard.”