Scorpion Strike

by Nance, John J. ;

  “She’ll start off as scanner,” Doug was saying, using the job description that applied to whichever flight engineer was not sitting at the panel that leg. The scanner stood outside during engine start and retrieved the chocks and landing-gear safety pins before climbing on board.

  “And our loadmaster is Phil Casey.” Doug’s thumb arced toward the rear of the airplane.

  “Yo,” said another voice on the interphone. “Glad to fly with you, Colonel. The vehicles are all in place and tied down and our passengers are all aboard, the Form F weight and balance is done, and I’ve already been briefed about the waiver for the overgross cargo load, and the cargo doors are closed and latched. By the way, sir, the Army major down here says to tell you he’s ready too.”

  “Thanks, Load,” Will said.

  Sandra Murray had already left the flight deck and plugged into the outside interphone cord. “Scanner’s on, walkaround complete, APU’s clear, sir.”

  The thought crossed Will’s mind that he was either going blind or she had been hiding when Tilden’s crew arrived at the ALCE. Not that it mattered, but how could he have failed to notice an attractive female engineer? Will looked around the cockpit once again, watching for a few moments as everyone went about the pre-start duties with practiced competence. The previous hours had been filled with confusion and frustration, horror and surprise. He had no idea whether he’d made the right decisions—there had been so many. But the irony of it all was that starting the mission itself seemed to be the easiest part. It was as if he could relax now, and get to work.

  “Before Starting Engines Checklist,” Will announced on interphone, and the comfortably familiar litany of checklist items began, taking them through engine start until all four were running, the chocks were removed, and the crew entrance door was closed.

  “We take off visual, climb visual, then pick up our instrument clearance from Riyadh, is that the plan?” Doug asked.

  “Exactly. We pop up. Riyadh radar doesn’t need to know where we came from.”

  The scanner reported, “Check complete,” and Will shoved the throttles up and manipulated the nosewheel steering wheel, guiding the 141 down the taxiway at an alarming rate to the end of runway 33. The landing lights of the arriving rescue C-130 were already visible on short final, and as they finished the lineup check and Doug obtained clearance for takeoff, the 130 touched down, slowed rapidly, using the massive reverse thrust of its paddlewheel propeller blades, and turned off the runway toward the line of vehicles and one ambulance waiting for them—a column of flashing red lights. If all went as planned, Collinwood and Rice—and the bodies of the other two crew members that had been recovered from the wreckage—would be on board within five minutes. By doing an engine-running onload, the C-130 could be back in the air within ten minutes of landing.

  “It’s gonna be a photo finish, pilot.” The voice was Doug’s. The winds were already picking up, the wall of dust and sand now obscuring the westernmost lights near the perimeter of the base as they advanced power to 1.92 engine pressure ratio on all four engines and the big jet began to accelerate through fifty knots, then eighty, and past rotate speed, 134 knots.

  “Go.” At the required call from the copilot, Will eased the yoke back, letting the ship accelerate as it lifted off the main gear with a series of thuds. He glanced at the vertical velocity and confirmed they were climbing before calling for gear-up.

  And just as suddenly they weren’t climbing.

  “Wind shear!” Doug’s voice was steady but strained. The radar altimeter was showing fifty feet now, but the needle was beginning to unwind with the end of the runway coming under the nose and the gear in the wells, up and locked. The headwind they had nosed into had suddenly become a tailwind with the onrush of the gust front, robbing them almost instantly of nearly thirty knots of wind across the wings.

  Will was only marginally aware of Doug’s left hand gathering the four throttles and pushing them all the way forward. His voice rang clearly in Will’s headset, even calmer now.

  “I’ve been here before, Will. Pull it back till we get the shaker. She’ll fly.”

  He pulled against all instincts, the airspeed now hovering around 110, the engines screaming, and the radar altimeter finally stopping its decline at thirty feet and beginning a slow reversal into a climb. Thank God for a flat desert beyond the threshold.

  “Back farther, a little more … There!”

  The stick shaker, a small eccentric motor at the base of both yokes, began vibrating both control columns, indicating they were nearing a stall with just a little margin left.

  “Okay, let off a hair of back-pressure until it stops, then nibble it in again.” Will could feel the pressure from Doug’s hands following him on the control yoke as the shaker stopped, then started, then stopped again.

  The radar altimeter was at fifty feet once more, and just as suddenly leaping through 150 as they pulled the throttles back to normal takeoff power.

  Will waited for the speed to shoot through minimum flap retract by ten knots before calling “Flaps up”—and letting his breath out.

  “Copilot, better let them—”

  A radio transmission from the right seat cut him off. “Sandy tower, MAC Alpha two-eight-four. Has the C-130 taken the runway yet?”

  A Saudi voice struggling with the international language of aviation, English, replied hesitantly, “You are asking, sir, about … who …”

  Doug forced himself to slow down. “Has the C-130 that just landed called for takeoff clearance yet?”

  “Negative, sir.”

  An American voice cut into the channel just as quickly. “Air Evac fourteen-twelve here, MAC. You calling?”

  “Roger. Bad wind shear on takeoff. We probably lost thirty knots, headwind shearing to tailwind. Are you guys ready to roll?”

  “Visibility’s going to hell, but we’re closing the doors now. We’ll carry extra speed on liftoff. Thanks for the warning.”

  The buzz of the C-141’s engines at climb power and the electronic hum of radio circuits and the interphone formed the background as Will climbed them through five thousand feet. Their ears were on the tower frequency behind them, their imaginations geared to following the C-130 out to the runway.

  At last: “Air Evac fourteen-twelve’s ready for takeoff.”

  “Roger, fourteen-twelve, the airfield is closed. Permission denied.”

  Will punched the transmit button. “Fourteen-twelve, this is MAC Alpha two-eight-four. Disregard the tower. I’m personally clearing you for takeoff on the authority of the base commander, Colonel … ah … Rashir. Tariq al Rashir. He has already approved your departure despite weather. Get that tub off the ground.”

  “Hey, MAC, you can’t play tower up there.” The accent was deep southern.

  The Saudi voice in the tower cut in again. “Air Evac fourteen-twelve, you are not cleared for takeoff. The airfield is closed.”

  Will looked at Doug. “Copilot, take the aircraft. We’re cleared to flight level two-five-zero until we can contact Riyadh control.”

  Doug nodded and Will diverted his gaze somewhere on the other side of the instrument panel as he concentrated on moving a mountain.

  “Air Evac fourteen-twelve, who’s the A/C?”

  “Major Daniels speaking, MAC.”

  “Major, Colonel Westerman here. I’m giving you a direct order to take off as long as you can do it safely. You are to disregard the control tower. You have my word that it has already been arranged, and Colonel Rashir has already approved takeoff regardless of weather.”

  “I don’t know, Colonel. I don’t think you can do that. I—”

  The Saudi voice came on again, somewhere between anger and hysteria at the subjugation of his frequency and authority.

  “You are no cleared to take off! Acknowledge! Not cleared, MAC and Air Evac! You are not having authority to talk this way on my channel!”

  “Air Evac, Westerman. Can you take off safely with the winds and visibi
lity the way they are?”

  “Yes sir. It’s bad, but it’s safe. I can even see the far end of the runway.”

  “Then for God’s sake, man, do it now! It’s my authority and my ass on the line—as long as it’s safe.”

  “Okay, Colonel, this one’s for you. Sandy Tower, Air Evac is rolling.”

  “NO NO NO NO NO, Air Evac! You do not have—” The Saudi voice had reached a higher pitch before being interrupted. Another voice came on then without warning, the tones low and precise—accented but understandable, calm and icy. It was Colonel Rashir.

  “Air Evac one-four-one-two is cleared for takeoff.”

  There was silence for more than a minute before the 130 pilot reported, “Airborne,” and the crew of MAC Alpha 284 breathed a collective sigh of relief.

  God willing, Will thought, Rice has a chance.

  He looked at Doug then, who seemed remarkably unaffected by the wind shear and the cliffhanger C-130 departure.

  “You insisted on coming, Harris.”

  “Just like old times. You’re just as pushy as you used to be.” Doug was grinning behind the boom microphone. “And besides, that sort of wind shear is old hat.”

  “You’ve gone through that before?”

  “Not in a 141, but in a Boeing 727 simulator in our Denver training center. We practice it in the commercial world. Textbook example of wind shear on takeoff. Like that Pan Am crash in New Orleans in 1982. We now know that they could’ve flown out of it if they’d known how to do what we just did.”

  “Next you’re going to tell me it’s a piece of cake, Harris!”

  Doug grinned. “It’s a piece of cake, Harris.”

  And Backus chimed in from the engineer’s seat.

  “I think I’ve changed my mind, Colonel Westerman, sir. I don’t want to go after all.”

  “Great,” Will replied. “I’ve drawn a crew of comedians.”

  With cruise altitude reached, Doug let himself relax for a few minutes. He turned the panel lights down and leaned forward in the copilot’s seat, his chin almost resting on the glare shield. A sparkling canopy of stars spread before the Starlifter like a secret feast prepared only for aviators and astronauts. There was such a peaceful grandeur about it, especially with most of the cockpit noise all but eliminated by the state-of-the-art David Clark headsets MAC had finally purchased for its aircrews. Doug could almost imagine some moving orchestral piece playing in magnificent accompaniment to the symphony of stellar images outside. He wished he had a Walkman along. Many of the C-141 and C-5 aircrews had fought the boredom of endless hours of Desert Shield flying by putting a soundtrack with their transoceanic flights—sticking a pair of stereo headphones under their headsets. Digital stereo and position reports at 39,000 feet. What was the line Bill Tilden had used? Roxette with Roma Control, Connick with Cairo, and Madonna with Madrid.

  Doug toggled the interphone switch on the control yoke.

  “I think this is where I came in.”

  “Say again, copilot?” The voice of the flight engineer came back in response.

  “How old are you, Sergeant Backus?”

  “Forty-eight, sir.”

  “You’re old enough to remember this. When your folks took you to the movies when you were a little kid, did they just charge right in as soon as they got there, regardless of whether the movie had started?”

  “No sir. My dad had a thing about getting there before it started.”

  “You’re lucky. My folks would walk in whenever, let the damn movie end and begin again, and then my dad would stand up and say, ‘Okay, this is where we came in, people. Let’s go.’”

  “I’ve heard the phrase, sir.”

  “Anyway, this is where I came in, about three hours ago”—he looked over at Will, who was riffling through paperwork in the left seat—“before I was rudely yanked from the sky by some banjo-pickin’ active-duty clown from Charleston.”

  Will looked over and grinned. “Watch your language, weekend warrior.”

  “That’s ‘active-duty weekend warrior’ to you, bub.”

  “Uh, copilot, are you saying Colonel W. plays banjo?”

  Will raised his hand in protest, but it was too late.

  “Better than Grandpa Jones, engineer. He and I had a professional folk music group back in the sixties in Dallas. I played twelve-string guitar, sang, kept the books, and got the gigs and the groupies, while he tortured a banjo and screeched.”

  Will was shaking his head in disgust as the engineer’s voice came back with a tinge of wonder. “Really? Our colonel?”

  “You bet. We were called the Mavericks.”

  “What do you mean, ‘screeched,’ Harris?” Will asked. “You’re the goddamn tenor! I’m a baritone. And we never had groupies.”

  “I’m impressed, sirs,” Backus said.

  “A long, long time ago,” Will said.

  “In a galaxy far, far away,” Doug added.

  “Engineer, this is the pilot. Would you monitor Victor Two, please? That’s Riyadh Control. I need to fill Colonel Harris in on the flight, and for security reasons we can’t do it on interphone, so we’ll have our headsets off.”

  “Roger, sir. I’ve got it.” Backus reached up and adjusted the switch for the number-two VHF radio while the two pilots shed their headsets and leaned over the center console.

  “Doug, there are some details I haven’t told you.”

  “I figured.”

  “First, you know we’re headed to the refueling track over the Red Sea, and you saw the location of that.”

  “Yeah. I’m familiar with the track.”

  “Okay, we’ll meet a KC-10 tanker on the refueling track, but he won’t be alone. There will be a C-141 with him. When he left his base, the 141 was to move in on his wing with his transponder off. The KC-10 had some preplanned ‘trouble’ about that point: his transponder got stuck in the indent position, so while the 141 quietly flies along with him, the KC-10 is showing up as an overly large target on any radar that might be looking at him. They’ll both be up there on the track, waiting for us. Now, while the other 141 stays off to the side, we’ll refuel. When we part company with the KC-10, however, we go northwest toward El Dab’a on the north coast of Egypt in tight formation with the other C-141. As we depart the refueling track, the other 141 will take our transponder squawk and our call sign and we’ll turn our transponder off and just pretend we’re not there. Meanwhile, as far as Cairo or anyone else knows, a single MAC flight—us—goes on to Europe.”

  “I don’t understand. Why the subterfuge? Aren’t we going to Iraq?”

  Will coughed a few times. Trying to make yourself heard in a 141 in flight meant almost yelling, with a very dry throat as a result.

  “When they ginned this mission up several days ago, they realized they needed the tracked fighting vehicles we’re carrying to take the assault force in, but the 130s that would normally do a combat insertion like this can’t carry that many in one run, and bring back an eight-man combat support team plus POWs, and they can’t fly as fast as we can.”

  “Which is how a 141 unit got involved,” Doug finished.

  “Exactly.”

  “These damn things are strategic assets, Will. We shouldn’t be using them like C-130s.”

  “I know, but my squadron is, in effect, tactical. Low and fast, sneaky-pete drops—all that. You know the SOLL mission.”

  “Yeah, I’m familiar with it.”

  “Okay. By order of, well, I guess the President, we can’t just fly in and land and blow up something in central Iraq at the moment. I’m not privy to—”

  “What? I didn’t hear that last.”

  “I say, I don’t get the top-secret briefings on why the policy is the way it is; all they do is tell me the policy, which is that we can’t just fly north and land openly. We have to sneak in and out. We can’t officially be doing what we’re doing, and this entire thing is top secret.”

  “But why?”

  “Hell, man, I’m n
ot a diplomat, but the whole reason—I’m guessing now—the whole reason for the President stopping Schwarzkopf short of Baghdad was to prove we weren’t out to conquer Iraq. So if we’re not out to conquer Iraq and we’ve liberated Kuwait, we have no business messing around in Iraq north of the ceasefire lines. At least that’s why we can’t just fly north across the border with God and everybody watching.”

  “So is this trip really necessary?”

  Will motioned Doug a bit closer, speaking directly into his ear, his voice urgent and worried. “Doug, remember those bugs Abbas mentioned back there? He came across the border the other day with news that Saddam’s about to unleash a biological holocaust. He’s telling our people that his lab has been ordered to make ready for use a batch of the scariest biological agent any of our people have ever heard of. I really didn’t understand most of what they told me, but I do understand its potential, and Doug, it scares the hell out of me! Abbas says it will not reach maturity, whatever that means, before day after tomorrow. But they could ship it as early as tomorrow.”

  “What kind of bugs? A virus?”

  “That’s what’s so frightening, Doug. Most biological agents have to infect by contact. Some can be spread temporarily by air, but they’re fragile. This mother of all viruses”—Doug pulled back and winced—“okay, okay, it’s overused, but hear me out.” He leaned back again. “This bug is the first our side has seen that can be spread by water. It doesn’t die easily, and when dry, it stays dormant like anthrax.”

  “Good Lord, Will. It’s a human virus?”

  “From what I understand, yes. An awful way to die. Abbas claims he nearly revolted when they tested it on some captured Kuwaitis in their lab last month. He said it was gruesome. When Baghdad passed the word to ship it out, he says he reached his breaking point and came south.”