Tail of the Storm

by Alan Cockrell

  The day was finally done and none too soon because I was about wasted, both physically and mentally. I was crossing the lowlands of a river bottom on a long, straight-in approach. The bayous below were clear and glassy calm, their banks laced with Spanish moss hanging in long white curtains from the thick hardwoods. I passed over a boat with two men casting lines and dropped down low, waving my arm out to them. They honored me by returning the wave, which was delightful because I knew then that they had not resented my noisy intrusion. But as I looked back up toward the airfield, the engineLycoming Model 0-320-E2A, one eachceased operation. Quit cold.

  The silence was more powerful than the roar of afterburner. Immediately I felt the Cub decelerate. The nose dropped. The prop windmilled. My heart ripped away and clambered up my throat, the torn arteries gripping my clenched teeth, demanding, pleading like an imprisoned sailor, to be released from the brig before the ship went down. I was suddenly transformed into a glider at 300 feet above a heavy woodland. The airfield was still a good mile away. Tremors oscillated wildly up and down my spine as I swung my head with frantic alarm left and right, looking for a clearing or a road, but it was only instinct. I knew there was no such sanctuary out here. I realized then that I was going to have to land in the trees. I had to remember to fly the plane downto resist the urge to raise the nose and stretch the glide toward the airfield. If I hit the trees in a slight descent, at just above stall speed, I might survive, but a stall would most certainly be fatal.

  I had about thirty seconds to run through the engine failure procedure, which was about standard for most light planes. Steeped in fright and foreboding, I figured that it was useless, but at least I'd be doing something rather than just sitting there waiting for the blunt trauma. I looked up at the magneto switches. Both were on. I pushed the mixture control knob in. It was there already. I rechecked the airspeed. Sixty knots. No less. Let's see, I still had oil pressure. I was conscious of a breathless, buzzing feeling. What was left? The fuel selector valve was somewhere down on the

  THE FUEL!!

  My hand reached down, trembling, fumbling, groping for the fuel selector; found it; switched it to the opposite tank. Instantly the engine fired up and roared back into life. I laughed wildly at the wonderful noise and yelled at the top of my voice.

  "What a stupid, stupid fool you are! Run a tank dry at this altitude! Idiot. Idiot! Idiot!!"

  And no one ever so severely berated himself while smiling as happily as did I.

  After a restless night I silenced the alarm and rose to prepare for another day of hunting. The dry, clear weather persisted. It would be another busy one. I switched on the TV to catch the morning news while brewing up coffee. The tube came to life with a story in progress of a plane crash last night. I sat down and watched with the concerned curiosity that any pilot would have. Then I froze with shock. A Cessna Skymaster had crashed in the forest north of Evergreen. There was one fatality, cause unknown. Dick was dead.

  Although I had my hunches, I never learned why it happened. But it really didn't matter. Whenever a pilot is killed, his death serves to remind ushis friends and peersof our own mortality. It makes us mindful of that stealthy, indiscriminate hunter that bides its time and waits for any of us to fly near its clutches. Sometimes we're sucked into it without warning, through no fault of our own. More often, the cause is our own carelessness. But if Dick is allowed to be forgotten, then he will have died for nothing, and I'll be closer to the hunter's grasp.

  It's the hunter of which Ernest Gann wrote. It's the one Dick saw for an unearthly millisecond.

  Fifteen.

  Face of the Bear

  For several minutes Cairo Control has played the devil, trying to establish radio contact with another aircraft. It happens sometimes; the plane is a bit too far away from the control center's antenna, or someone's transmitter or receiver is weak. I'm not paying much attention to Cairo's problem, and I'm jolted when I hear them call us.

  "MAC Bravo 5523, Cairo, can you relay to Aeroflot 16214?" Relay? Me? To a Russian? Yeah.

  "Roger, Cairo, what's the message?"

  "Tell him to contact Athinai on frequency 125.2, please."

  I comply with Cairo's request and succeed in informing the Soviet that he is to call Athens Control. The Russian voice is thickly accented and grateful for my assistance. He sounds like a decent guy. Maybe he's the one I met last year. I wonder what that guy did with my wings.

  Flying in the Middle East was new to me. With a single exception, I had been no farther east than Incirlik Air Base near Adana, Turkey, when Desert Shield started. But that one flight into the mysterious, forbidden regions beyond NATO's eastern frontier transformed my vision of the world.

  It was the eeriest piece of atmosphere I had ever flown through. I developed a case of the creeps, just thinking about where we were. Off to the left was Mt. Ararat, upon which the Ark had supposedly been wrecked. But we only occasionally got glimpses of the historic mountain as we descended below its towering heights through layer after layer of gray stratus cloud. Somewhere off to the right was another huge rock shrouded in cloud. We hoped the Soviet radar was accurate enough to keep us clear of the mountain spires.

  We were more than a bit apprehensive and had a right to be. We were descending through heavy cloud into a valley with great mountains all around. Even the valley floor was almost 3,000 feet above sea level. There was no room for error or sloppy flying. And complicating it all was wayunorthodox to usthat the Soviets structure their airspace. Their altitudes are measured in meters, so that we must convert to feet in order to use our altimeters accurately. In addition, they measure atmospheric pressure in millibars, and again we must convert to inches of mercury in order to adjust our altimeters. Topping it all off, they measure flight levels above airport elevation, not above mean sea level, as most of the world does. Climb on board almost any U.S. registered airplane, military or civilian, except for one major airline (not mine) that does it the Soviet way, and you'll see that the altimeter registers the height above sea level of the airport at which you're sitting. Thus we had to correct our altimeters yet again. If you then add in another supremely complicating factorthe easily misunderstood, thick accents of the Soviet radar controllersyou have a recipe for disaster. Two days before, one of the Soviets' own airlifters had cratered somewhere down below while trying to get into Yerevan, killing all aboard.

  But there was still more to be concerned about. We were among the first foreign aircraft ever to be allowed in the Soviet Union without an onboard Soviet escort. So we were completely on our own. The big concern was the Iranian border, just a few miles off to the right. We were pretty sure the Soviets didn't intend to splash us if we strayed off course, but we feared that the Iranians would not be as scrupulous.

  We finally broke through the lowest layer and began maneuvering for our approach to the airport. The landscape below looked mystifying, like some never-never land from a folktale. The countryside was flat, peppered with villages and snow-covered collective farms, but here and there great inverted cone-shaped mountains abruptly breached the valley floor and rose precipitously into the clouds. Layers of blue smoke from thousands of fireplaces hung like thin veils over the settlements. We strained at the windows to glimpse the earthquake damage but saw none this far south of the epicenter.

  We intercepted the ILS localizer course, which worked just like the ones we were familiar with throughout the world, and we soon saw the huge runway ahead. It bore the standard markings to which we were also accustomed. But turning off the runway, familiarity departed like a startled covey of quail. We were confronted by the most imposing control tower we had ever seen, a gigantic mushroomshaped thing rising high above the airport. We taxied past dozens of Aeroflot airliners parked around the circular terminal and were directed to our parking spot. We were stopped beside a column of huge Soviet planes, and our windscreen came to a halt mere inches from the blade of the biggest, most grotesque helicopter I had ever seen. Even before the
engines had spooled down, scores of trucks, all of a strange make, came speeding within feet of our nose, and some of the smaller vehicles even shot beneath our wings. They carried heaping loads of earthquake relief supplies from the long line of Soviet airlifters in front of us.

  Soon after we had opened the doors, a couple of solemn men in civilian attire and overcoats climbed aboard and began looking over our cargo, which was experimental portable shelters donated by a U.S. company. Then we learned how unprepared for us the Soviets were. Neither trucks nor a much-needed forklift was available to unload us. We were advised to wait. and wait we did. We sat there for hours, not daring to shut down the auxiliary power unit (APU). It supplied us with electrical power for the lights and radios. We had been ordered to keep one HF radio tuned to the frequency of "Phantom," which was our command post in Europe. We were to check in with Phantom every hour while on the ground. The APU also supplied a small volume of heat, which we directed to the flight deck. It was impossible for the APU's small jet engine to heat the huge cargo bay. Hour after hour we watched as big Soviet jets rolled in one after the other, and it became obvious that they really didn't need us. They had plenty of airlift capacity; it was clear that we were there only in a symbolic sense. Soviet-American relations were warming up under Mikhail Gorbachev's leadership. I figured that we had been offered by our government as a goodwill gesture. and the offer had been accepted in the same spirit.

  After a while Soviet pilots began to appear and asked in broken English if they could come aboard. We welcomed them up to our warm flight deck, where we exchanged handshakes and grins. There followed much pointing at various instruments, handles, and switches, accompanied by grunts, chuckles, and sporadic expressions of mixed English and Russian. Finally, after a mutual display of wallet photos of spouses and kids, they departed, leaving us with invitations to visit their strange-looking jets.

  And we did. We walked down the rows of giant jets, stealing glances behind and around us for the mystical men in long coats peering over newspapers, but there seemed to be no such eyes following us. We proceeded to climb ladders into the bellies of the behemoths and stared incredulously at the jungle of instrumented cockpits. I remembered from a briefing years ago that they painted their interiors turquoise, which their psychologists had determined was the best color for reducing pilot stress. And here it was, painted up like the dash of a '57 Chevy. But with a myriad of instrumentsmore than we had, and all of them seemed to be huge round things with bold, antiquelike numbers painted inside them. Instruments were everywhere they could be installed; they stared at us from every corner of the big flight deck. On the aft bulkheads were switches by the hundreds, which I took to be substitutes for circuit breakers.

  Again we performed the ritual: pointing, grunting, nodding, grinning, pretending we knew exactly what our hosts were trying to explain to us about their big Illyushin-76 jet. As we shook hands and departed, I impulsively grabbed and ripped off my Velcro-backed name tag from my flight suit. It had silver USAF command pilot wings embossed on it, with my name and the words "Mississippi Air Guard" underneath. I presented it to the captain of the Illyushin and noticed his startled reaction. He grabbed my hand and pumped it again while saying something that sounded deeply sincere.

  I walked away pondering the stunned look on his face when I ripped off the name tag and commented to my old friend, George Fondren, at how astounded the man had been to receive my gift. But George had another idea. "No," he said. He paused to chuckle and shake his head in mock disgust over my naivete. "The guy has just never seen Velcro before."

  Back at the Starlizzard, things were still in a quandary, although a platoon of Soviet soldiers was arriving to offload the cargo by hand. The stale ham sandwiches from our flight lunches had been consumed long since, and we began to wonder if we might spend the night in the "Lockheed Hilton." But then the enterprising George, who spreads political goodwill with watermelons and vise-grip handshakes, got a wild idea to wander over to the airport terminal. There we were, in a notorious police state, doing what we could have been arrested for at a large western airport. I was nervous about it, but I followed him across the busy ramp with airliners coming and going and entered the huge building.

  We walked through crowded corridors and waiting areas, past concessions and ticket counters, nudging through crowds of civilians and soldiers. I don't think the adventurous George thought anything of it, but I was extremely self-conscious all the while. Here we were in the heart of communism, wearing strange flight suits with American flags on our shoulders. Thousands of heads turned and followed our progress through the terminal as we tried to look as if we had an official destination.

  At length we passed a concession stand that had various pastries and cakes displayed. It was illegal to use foreign currency and would be foolish in an open forum like this, but we had no rubles. I sensed another impulse in George and slid away to an empty bench across the corridor. Watching, I saw a well-dressed elderly couple approach him. They began asking him questions in Russian, sensing his interest in the pastries. Soon they began fumbling through their pocketbooks, and he turned and pointed at me, holding up two fingers. Then it was done. He shook their hands and came over handing me the cake, which was uniquely delicious.

  Shortly the same couple left their seats and approached us again, offering more money We wanted to give them some dollars in return but it was too dangerous, many eyes were on us. We could go to jail for that. We didn't want to take the money, but they insisted, and finally we accepted the five-ruble bill. Then George did the only thing we could have done to repay them, although I wondered if it might jeopardize the couple if they accepted. He tore off the Velcroed American flag on his left shoulder and handed it to the lady. I immediately followed suit, handing mine to the gentleman. The two stood there for a minute staring at the flags in their hands, and tears began to roll down their cheeks. Once again we shook their hands and wished them well. As we left they returned to their bench jabbing handkerchiefs at their faces, carefully cradling those little symbols of freedom and hope in their hands.

  As we departed, I couldn't help but consider the odds. Out of the billions of human beings on earth, only a relative handful were born American. And yet I, fortunate beyond comprehension, was among them. I had pondered this notion before, but never had it seemed so profoundly clear as that night when our gear finally came up and we banked westward. We were headed home for Christmas, already blessed immeasurably.

  Sixteen.

  Crew Unrest

  It has been an hour since we shut the Starlifter down here on the Dhahran ramp, and of course the crew bus has not yet appeared. Things have changed dramatically in the last couple of weeks in concert with the cease-fire. They dumped the pool-pilot practice and are now sending us downrange with basic two-pilot crews. The good news is that the twenty-two-hour days that were slaughtering us have now been halved. The bad news is that we lay over here in the desert. More accurately, we go into "stage" herewe wait until an outbound mission is assigned us. It could be twelve hours from now or twelve days.

  In the dimming light, some of the crew have moved into the shadows under the gargantuan wings and are sitting among their gear. I notice the cooler lid is hurriedly raised and lowered, and I hear some whooshing sounds. That has to be soft drinks. Surely my crew wouldn't drink beer here, where it is forbidden not only on any Air Force ramp in general but in the teetotaling Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in particular. Tell me it ain't so.

  Finally the "bus" arrives, a minivan into which we cram every cubic centimeter with our gear and pieces of ourselves and endure the crude remarks about cozy proximity and sexual orientation. But humor quickly ebbs as limbs begin to tingle from lack of blood. We pass a busy field hospital and rows of captured Iraqi tanks and armored personnel carriers and go through a couple of security checkpoints and onto a four-lane highway laden with military traffic.

  After about ten minutes our abode comes into view the USAF barracks dubbed Eagle
town. We pass through a couple of rows of tall fences with concertina wire curling along the top and drive past row after row of long, single-story prefabricated structures, all about the width of a double-wide mobile home. Beside each is a sandbagged air raid shelter.

  We check in with the stage manager, who breaks the news that there is a lull in the airlift operations and that consequently we can expect an extended visit. He lethargically warns us that if we have any alcoholic contraband we must deposit it with him, then gives us our keys and room assignments.

  My copilot, Mike Connerya Northwest Airlines pilot in civilian lifeand I throw our gear down on the floor in the eight-by-ten-foot room. There is no furniture except stacked bunk beds that are surprisingly comfortable. Already across the hall a thump, a door slam, running boots, and unintelligible yells indicate that my two engineers are perpetrating some sort of horseplay on the wary loadmaster. I pledge not to come to their assistance in the least if some disturbed sleeper from down the hall emerges with a crash axe to exact carnage.

  The respite at the Eagletown barracks is not bad. The air conditioning is great, and there is little distraction. Were it not for the clamor of incoming crews, conditions would be perfect for a blissful hibernation, one long overdue.

  Mike and I pick through our cold MREs and prepare to turn in when more thumps on the thin walls and a chorus of snickering bring us out to investigate. The two young engineers, Len Alvis and Chuck Lee, are pulling a foolish prank on the load, one Keith Burton. Len and Chuck are thin cigarette-suckers, ever full of pent-up energy and youth, both similar in build and behavior. They've been dubbed the squirrel brothers, namely Fluffy and Scruffy, by the salty load, and they in turn have labeled him the Possum. Keith is an experienced loadmaster, a tough ex-cop who patrolled the most violent precinct in Jackson until he burnt out from police work. He is a man I would not want to get into a fight with. I was riding in back once and watched as his voice boomed and echoed through the public address system above the din of the engines, boldly admonishing some elite and armed Special Forces soldiers to return to their seats.