Angels 30 - 68

Harriet (Ht), pregnant, burst into tears at the drop of the hat. Chegwidden (C) found her crying about Bud (B) not having called from his assignment in 29 Palms. He explained to her that it was "HORMONES" and showed her two scars on his balding head. One from 39 stitches given him by the Viet Cong and the other where his ex-wife had knocked him unconscious 6 hours with an electric can opener in her 2nd trimester. He invited Ht to dinner with him but told her not to "make him regret it." Later, she nauseated him with a sardine Dagwood sandwich then threw out his risotto lunch when she cleaned out the fridge.

Harm (H) and Mac (M)investigated the loss of a Tomcat aboard the Coral Sea. Lt Cdr Rice (Karma) and his RIO Anne "go-go" Bender ejected after "popping up" between attacking Iraqis and his wingmen, Lt "slider" Morrison and Lt Brian "bear" Hass in the "no-fly" zone. The Iraqis had drawn them in with one aircraft then came up behind with another. The Iraqi was on sliders tail with a lock. Karma got a lock on the enemy craft but didn't fire. Instead, he "charged" the craft shearing his wing and ejected before it exploded it's fuel into a fireball. PO Moses said the plane was OK when it left. Go-Go said that Karma had acted like he didn't hear her telling him to take the shot and kept saying "what?" Karma finally admitted that he had "heard a voice" ordering him NOT to fire. The doctor said Karma was in good health then the CAG climbed on H for "saying something that made Karma resign." H and M found Karma and Slider in a fight and had to break them up. H asked M which on she wanted to take and she said "I'll take the cute single one." "Just kidding," she said. H found Karma in the chapel where he claimed that it was God who had ordered him not to fire. The radio tapes revealed Karma saying "what?" but no other voices or transmissions. They even asked Webb if there was a new "radio jamming device" that they didn't know about. H told M they needed "advice from a higher source," and M asked "C?" The chaplain said that he believed Karma was honest and heard something. "Whether it was God or not was between Karma and the Man upstairs." M retorted, "unless the Man is a Woman."

H tried to talk Karma out of resigning. Karma asked him if he thought his night blindness was for a purpose so he could help people as a lawyer. When H said he didn't believe so, Karma advised that there "may be a grand scheme that we are only privy to now and then." Upset, Karma said that the "laws of physics: gravitational force, centripetal acceleration and Bernoulli's principle, "are my ten commandments." "There is not room for God, or angels, or anything like that- I didn't talk to God, why is he talking to me?" "I don’t want to stop flying," he told H, "but I don't ever want to hear that voice in my cockpit again." H asked the CAG to let them re-fly the mission and was given 1 hour in the air with Slider as his RIO. Karma told H he got his call sign by surviving a couple of close calls. H told him that flying a combat jet was the "most dangerous job on earth. Who needs a higher power more than the men who drive them." And "even if the voice was God," H said, "he told you not to fire. He didn't tell you not to fly." They went up together and M advised H to "be home before the streetlights come on." Karma asked H, "are you ready?" "Always!" H said.

At altitude, Karma and Bear began hallucinating and went unconscious, on autopilot, from bad oxygen. They were heading toward Iraqi airspace and M suggested they just "disengage the autopilot." The CAG blew up at her for her naivety and she was sent to check the source of the bad oxygen. They found a "bad O ring" which had contaminated the oxygen. Then the CAG apologized and assigned her to get a technician from Grummand on the phone. The technician said that if the planes sensors got sent out of parameters by tilting greater than 45 degrees the autopilot would automatically disengage. H was ordered to fly his wing tip under Karma's and use Bernoulli's principle to lift it over 45 degrees. "Who's brilliant idea was this?" H asked. The dubiously designed plan was to disengage the autopilot then have Karma, who had been unconscious to the point of seizures, wake up in time to pull out of the power-dive in time to not hit the ground. (?!) It did work but Karma was told that when he had "heard the voice" he was flying on "clean" oxygen. "Then why did I hear the voice?" he asked. H said "I guess it wasn't your enemies day to die, like today wasn't yours."