Afterburners by William Robert Stanek Read Free Book Online Page B

happier bunch of human beings kissing their own behinds in all the world. Needless to say, after that we clutched our chem masks in their pouches as if they were Bibles and we were repentant sinners bound for church.
        At the airport complex, a lieutenant colonel, our deployed commander, greeted us. In later days, we’d come to call him Gentleman Bob, but for now he scared the hell out of most of us. When a lieutenant colonel greets you, shakes your hand, and tells you how happy he is you have arrived, you start to worry.
        Gentleman Bob wasn’t a little man. He was six foot four, give or take a bit, and broad shouldered. He was the commander of the 43rd—the front-end crew—and what little I knew of him at the time was from his cavalry call salutes on Monday mornings and Friday evenings. He directed us to the airport terminal where customs agents awaited.
        Turkish Customs stamped our orders, told us about drugs, contraband, and their laws regarding females and then released us. Flashbacks from Midnight Express ran through my mind. The Turks with dark hair, the obligatory thick mustaches, and often thick dark beards that masked their faces and their dark-toned skin matched those images exactly. Their faces for the most part were expressionless except for the man in the long tan trench coat that just stared and scrutinized. I’m not sure who he was, but I know that when one of us tried to ask him a question, the custom’s agent behind the counter who had been stamping our orders became frantic. At that moment, flashbacks from Midnight Express didn’t seem so far fetched.
        Turkey was a land rich in customs and traditions far different from any place I’d ever been. While largely Muslim, it was not entirely akin to its neighbors. The Turks were considered Ottomans and not Arabs. In fact, both Iraq and Kuwait were once part of the vast Ottoman Empire, a Turkish empire that thrived for six centuries and collapsed after World War I.
        Outside, our A-bags were scattered everywhere and we had to sort through them to find our own. Afterward, our fellow ground support troopers took a bus to Tent City. I’d already heard about it, tents going up as fast as they could pound the stakes into the ground. In the coming weeks, Tent City would grow manyfold; and conditions that had once been bad would turn to near good.
        We were fortunate to be aircrew, but not that fortunate. The need for crew rest and quiet hours mandated that we be quartered separately. With the air campaign ongoing, flyers were, after all, the reason everyone was here. We went off to quarters that would be quieter, or so we hoped.
        The three females in our group were the fortunate ones. They were a combat minority and as members of another minority here, aircrew, they were given exceptional treatment—not that any of them wanted it or asked for it. They were dropped off at billeting, where they had private quarters, showers, televisions, microwaves, phones, and all the other amenities of life. Afterward, the crew van driver took those remaining to our new home. Two converted, freestanding one-room buildings that had once served as professional military education (PME) classrooms. All the desks had been stacked on the sides of the room and cots had been set up in their places.
        Our fellow crew dogs were pleased and not pleased to see us, especially as we crowded extra cots into the already overfilled quarters. Two twenty-by-forty-foot buildings stuffed with thirty cots each didn’t allow for much movement space. I barely got enough room to set up my cot so I wasn’t kicking another guy in the head. Who were we to complain, though? There was a set of working toilets in the outhouse set back from the two PME classrooms and running water. Cold running water, which we weren’t supposed to drink because it would most likely give us the shits, but at least it was working. Tent City didn’t always have