“Shutting down four,” the engineer replied.
The flight engineer shut off the outboard right engine but there was no way to transfer the fuel without radically affecting the flight profile of the aircraft. Given the current conditions, the shift in balance would make handling more difficult than it already was. They had already lost several hundred pounds of fuel with more each minute bleeding away and there was nothing he could do about it short of climbing out on the wing and crimping the fuel line closed. He hoped that the freezing temperatures outside would freeze the fuel port closed but no such luck. The plane lurched sideways then dropped.
“Pull up. Pull up. Pull up.” The electronic voice alarm, Bitching Betty as it was referred to, sounded inside the cockpit accompanied by a two tone alert.
“Goddamnit!” the pilot muttered as he tried to regain control. Pushing the control yoke forward, he attempted to regain air speed while the co-pilot assisted.
The MC-130 hung in the air with its nose down as the flight crew fought for control. The buffeting of the storm was getting worse as together, the two pilots pulled back on the control wheel.
Loose equipment and personnel were thrown around the cargo area, against the forward bulkhead then back towards the loading ramp as the cargo plane began to porpoise in the air.
“Number four is shut down but we still have that fuel leak and it’s getting worse,” the engineer reported.
With the fuel leak and the outboard engine now off, the plane would be unable to climb over the weather front or any high terrain it may encounter along the way.
“Do it. Transfer the fuel out of the wing tank,” the pilot directed. He looked over at his co-pilot and nodded his head. They would have a fight on their hands now as the center of balance would be affected by the hundreds of pounds of fuel. A sudden crosswind shoved the large aircraft sideways.
The pilot stomped on the rudder pedal to compensate as the plane dropped suddenly. He pulled the yoke back towards him knowing he was bringing the nose up too far. The airframe shuddered as it tried to correct its downward plummet.
“Stall. Stall. Stall.” The verbal warning announced accompanied by a klaxon as the plane nosed up but still dropped with such speed that the flight crew felt their stomachs race up. Both pilots shoved the yoke forward hoping to regain airspeed and control of the plane.
Inexorably, the MC-130’s nose started to come down and airspeed increased. The pilot gently coaxed the control yoke back while the co-pilot worked the center line throttles. The plane regained a normal flight profile as the flight crew members watched the artificial horizon return to level.
“Station check,” the pilot ordered as he fought the aircraft.
“Number three is still showing green but temp is up and moving to the red,” the flight engineer reported. “Could be collateral damage from takeoff,” he added.
“You’re full of all kinds of good news,” the pilot quipped.
“Shit, sir. We clipped those trees pretty fucking hard on the way out,” the engineer replied.
“High terrain at 500,” the navigator announced.
“Son of a bitch,” the pilot muttered as he tried to see out the windscreen through the blowing snow.
“Find me a way out of this shit hole,” he ordered.
“Roger that,” the navigator replied, looking at his terrain radar. “Clear terrain to the right, 110 miles.”
The pilot looked out his window as if to see the open area through the blizzard.
“Turning right,”
“Copy that,”
The wounded MC-130 banked right and then leveled off with the pilot and co-pilot fighting the now unbalanced plane.
“Number Three is going hot. Overheat warning just came on. I’m going to have to feather it pretty soon,” the engineer reported.
“Where’s that clear area? We need to set this sick bird down now,” the pilot asked as he searched out his windows.
“Clear terrain ahead, looks like tundra,”
“How far off course are we?”
The pilot looked over at the co-pilot when his question went unanswered.
“How far?” he asked again.
“22 miles,” the navigator replied flatly.
“Fuck.”
“What happened?” O’Toole asked from the flight deck entrance.
“Lost an engine and most of our fuel,” the co-pilot said.
“How bad?” O’Toole asked.
“Bad enough,” the flight engineer replied as he pointed to his panel lit up with steady red and flashing yellow lights. “Last time I saw this many warnings, I was still in school.” He paused to tap on a gauge with his finger tip. “Tell the boys in back we’re setting down and it’s not going to be pretty.” An audible alarm sounded along with a flashing indicator.
“Feathering number Three!” the engineer called out.
“We’ll be landing soon,” the engineer said to O’Toole. “Shouldn’t be a big fire as we’ve lost most of our fuel, maybe just a small fireball that we can roast marshmallows over.”
O’Toole looked at the flight engineer. The man had just calmly announced that they would be crashing as if it were an everyday occurrence. He took one last look around the cockpit before he went back down to the cargo area to let the soldiers know they were landing.
“All right ladies! I’ve just been informed that we will be experiencing an unscheduled landing! This is not a crash! The ground is coming up to meet us!” he yelled over the noise of the slipstream as he buckled himself into his seat.
***
“Flaps at twenty percent,”
“Twenty percent,”
“Fuel?”
“Venting what’s left of the fuel now,” the flight engineer replied as he hit the switches to jettison the remaining fuel in the crippled plane.
“Increase flaps to thirty percent.”
“Thirty percent,”
The plane yawed abruptly to port.
“Number Three is really acting up. So glad I just dumped all the fuel so that won’t be a problem anymore,” the flight engineer said.
“Let’s bleed off some airspeed and try to set this bitch down without hurting her too bad,” the pilot grunted as he fought for control.
The blowing snow outside cleared suddenly as the plane dropped into a valley that sheltered them from the blizzard revealing a large open area with scattered trees.
“Altitude?”
“120, 100, 85, 55,”
“Airspeed?”
“150,120, 110, 90,”
“Full flaps.” The co-pilot reached over and moved the flap lever to its stop.
“We’re setting down right now,” the pilot stated as he pulled back on the yoke as the airspeed rapidly decreased and the plane dropped like an express elevator to hell.
The rear of the plane was the first part to contact the ground. The bulge where the main gear resided impacted hard, tearing off the landing gear bay doors and ripping out the rear landing wheels. The sound of screeching metal and a deep rumbling resounded throughout the plane as the ice covered ground ate into the air frame and undercarriage. The pilot slowly pushed forward on the control yoke letting the forward part of the plane contact the ground. An immense bow wave of powdery snow was flung up in front of the aircraft. The view outside the flight deck windows was one of snow, trees and more snow as the plane slid along the ground until the left wing struck a stand of large trees and was ripped off in a maelstrom of screaming metal, spraying hydraulic fluid and the remaining aircraft fuel. The jarring impact was enough to throw the plane into a sideways spin as the last of its momentum bled off and it finally slid to a stop amidst a large drift. The flight crew was thrown against their restraints as the plane came to the end of its bone jarring journey.
“Pull the extinguishers for One and Two,” the pilot ordered before he realized that the wing that had contained engines One and Two was no longer attached. Somehow, even with the loss of that wing, they were down in on
e piece. He began to run through his shutdown checklist as sparks arced from one of the overhead panels.
They had landed.
***
Chapter 31
New York City, Central Park
“Rawhide Six-One? Where have I heard that name before?” Ski asked his men as they hunkered down by a city bus and looked at the entrance to the location that they had been directed to.
“It sounds familiar,” Jiminez said, as he started patting his pockets then shrugged off the pack that had the team’s radio. He opened a side pocket on the pack and rummaged through it before removing a heavily creased, laminated sheet of paper.
“Yeah, this is it,” he said handing the call sign sheet to Ski.
Ski looked at the list of the radio call signs for all the units that had deployed to New York. Most of them had been crossed off but down near the bottom of the page was an entry for Rawhide Six-One.
“Engineers? No shit?” Ski muttered. He looked up and around. They had good position for now. The only infected they had seen were either in the park or blocks away. But, with the shooter actively servicing targets inside the park perimeter, and the mines detonating when infected stumbled across or were dropped by the shooter; it was only a matter of time before other infected made their presence known.
Sierra-3 moved stealthily through the clogged streets. Their objective was a long term parking garage. Checking the area around the entrance, they moved under the barrier arm and headed into the structure. The ground floor was a warren of parked cars, now dusty and abandoned as their owners were either infected, dead, or evacuated.
“Clear left,” Pruitt hissed. Luzetski scanned the area from behind a small import.
“Clear right,” Jiminez announced.
“All clear,” Ski stated. His team had checked the entire ground floor and found nothing. The sound of metal on concrete from behind him caused him to spin and take aim.
“Whoa, whoa,” the soldier who had his head stuck out of the storm drain manhole said. He looked up and around at the rifles pointed at him.
“Sierra-3?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Ski replied. “Rawhide Six-One?”
The soldier nodded his head then slowly climbed out.
“That will take you to where we’re at,” he explained. Ski looked at the dark hole then at the soldier who climbed out of it. His uniform had the three turreted castle of the US Army Combat Engineers patch and a name tape that identified him as Wheeler. The only weapons that he carried were the M9 sidearm in a tactical thigh holster and a combat knife at his waist.
“What are you waiting for? The Zulus could stumble on us at anytime,” Wheeler said as he nervously looked around. “We need to get moving.”
Sierra-3 looked at Ski then at the manhole then back at Ski.
“Fuck it,” Ski said as he let his rifle hang from its sling and moved it around to the side of his body before climbing down into the storm drain. Wheeler waited until all of Sierra-3 was inside. He looked around at the parking garage one more time to make sure there weren’t any infected that had wandered in before he dropped into the hole pulling the heavy metal cover in place.
At the bottom of the ladder, Sierra-3 waited with other members of Wheeler’s scout team. Ski studied the group, there were some New York City ESU members mixed in with the military personnel and one nervous civilian dressed in work clothes and an orange, dented hard hat, a tool belt at his waist identified him as some kind of utility worker. The ESU guys stood out, dressed in tactical black with HK MP5s. Parked a short distance away, right at the edge of the pool of illumination cast by the tactical lights and mini-Maglites, were several bicycles.
“C’mon,” Wheeler said as he pushed through the group and mounted a bicycle. Ski looked at the man, shook his head, then followed. The tunnel was large enough that they could ride two abreast but there were sections where they had to adjust to single file. A small flow of water covered the lowest portion of the floor. At intervals along the tunnel, low wattage bulbs behind wire cages struggled to illuminate more than a few feet. Where the bulbs had burnt out, chem lights had been strung casting an otherworldly greenish glow to the tunnel.
“Where’d you get all these bikes?” Ski asked.
“We hit a sporting goods store a while back looking for supplies. Saw these bikes and some other things so we appropriated them,” Wheeler explained. “Isn’t this great?” he asked, a tinge of excitement in his voice.
Ski looked at the other NCO as he pedaled; he looked like he was enjoying himself immensely. These guys had spent way too much time underground. Wheeler turned a corner then stopped, straddling his bike as the rest of the group arrived. Ski noticed that the civilian utility worker didn’t look all that comfortable to be in the tunnel.
“This is as far as we can go with the bikes. We walk the rest of the way in,” Wheeler said as he dismounted his bike and threw the kick stand. He led the group through a narrower tunnel before stopping at a large, metal, and very old door. Wheeler removed his knife and used the butt of the grip to bang against the door. With a squeal of unoiled hinges, the door opened inward to reveal three more soldiers, all heavily armed.
“It’s me, Wheeler. I’m bringing in Sierra-3,” Wheeler said. The soldiers behind the door relaxed somewhat but kept their weapons ready.
“OK, one a time. Quickly but quietly,” the senior of the soldiers said. Sierra-3 slipped through followed by Wheeler’s team then the door was closed and bolted. Ski looked around at the room they had entered. It looked like some kind of sub-basement.
“What is this place?” he asked.
“We think this was one of the old coal transfer areas,” Wheeler said. “These tunnels,” he indicated the direction they were heading, “used to go all the way to the waterfront. Ships would unload coal there for the furnaces that used to heat a lot of the old buildings in this area. When coal wasn’t used anymore, the city blocked off the tunnels and for the most part, forgot about them.”
“How’d you know these were here?” Ski asked, looking at Wheeler.
“That’s something you’ll have to ask someone else,” Wheeler said. “C’mon, we have to keep moving,” he said, leading the group deeper into the warren of tunnels. They climbed several flights of stairs until they reached a modern fire door. Wheeler repeated the same method of knocking as he had when they first entered. The door opened silently and behind it was a mix of soldiers and NYPD officers, all pointing weapons at them. Once they recognized who it was, they lowered their weapons and stepped aside.
“Welcome to New York’s Museum of Natural History,” Wheeler said with a grand sweeping gesture of his arm. Ski took a few steps inside and looked around. The Grand Hall was full of people, civilians, soldiers, police officers, sitting, standing, or relaxing on cots. The upper floor balcony had people lined up looking down at him. A small figure cut through the gathering and stopped a few paces away.
He looked at the person. His eyes grew wide and his mouth dropped open.
“Still good at catching flies I see,” the female warrant officer said with a grin. Ski returned the grin.
“They shouldn’t let women into combat,” he said.
“Then how’d you get in?” Warrant Officer Dayna Doyle said before moving closer to Ski then backing off once she caught of whiff of him. He looked at her in disbelief, not from her retreat from his odoriferous self and team mates, but disbelief that after all these years, they would meet again. The first time they met was at Fort Leonard Wood. He was there taking the Combat Engineer course when he had met her. She was already a combat engineer and of the same rank as he. They had spent time discussing why women weren’t suited for combat operations and had finally agreed to disagree. When he had graduated, orders were already waiting for him. He had never seen her after that but the nights they had spent together, their bodies intertwined, remained forever ingrained in his mind.
She looked at him like he looked at her, the same incredulous emotion then h
er eyes changed subtlety yet enough for him to know that her mind was working over a problem and had found a solution.
“We need to talk,” she said. Before Ski could say anything in response, he was interrupted.
“What’s this?” a loud voice called out. Ski and Doyle separated and looked at the stocky officer who was walking over to meet the new arrivals. Ski noticed the officer’s uniform was spotless and actually had creases.
“Sir,” Doyle said, coming to attention and saluting the Lieutenant Colonel. Ski mimicked her salute coming to a semblance of attention. Shit. Why him? Why now? Ski thought as his momentary happiness of meeting Doyle again was erased.
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Wiener returned their salute and then shifted his gaze to Luzetski taking in his stained clothing and unshaved face.
“Sir, this is…” Doyle began.
“I know who this is,” the senior office said, cutting off Doyle.
“Sir, good to see you again,” Ski said, a grin creasing his features.
Lieutenant Colonel Wiener looked at Luzetski and the rest of Sierra-3.
“Sergeant Stanislaus Luzetski,” Wiener said. “Small world.” Wiener looked at the NCO and shook his head in disgust. “You and your men are a disgrace,” Wiener said stepping closer. “I’ve never seen a more sorry excuse for a soldier than what I have before me.” Wiener eyed Luzetski up and down as he clasped his hands behind his back and slowly circled the NCO.
“What the hell have you been doing all this time? Your uniform is not representative of what a United States soldier should look like,” Wiener stated as his sniffed deeply. “You smell like you’ve been wallowing in garbage and shit. Probably both.” Wiener continued to shake his head as he circled the NCO.
Luzetski was confused. He knew Wiener from Ranger school, they had graduated together. But, whereas Ski went on to a Ranger Battalion and Airborne school, Wiener had gone off to another school and finally to a command. Ski couldn’t recall the actual location where Wiener eventually ended up. He had heard a lot of rumors but nothing that had firmed up to reality. They had met again years later at airborne school where Wiener had barely graduated and only then because Ski, an instructor by then, one of the ‘black hats’, had helped him. Ski had lost track of Wiener after that. Now, after all these years, he was surprised to run into him given the current circumstances. He didn’t recognize the unit patch on the Wiener’s uniform.
Up From the Depths: Book 4 Movement to Contact Page 22