by Tom Clancy
“We’re going back,” Clark told the pilot.
“What?” Larson turned to see two soldiers taking Juardo out of the Beech and toward the helicopter.
“We’re taking our friend here back home to Medellin. Couple of things we have to do first, though ... ”
“Oh, great.” Larson walked back to his aircraft and climbed up on the wing to open his fuel caps. He had to wait fifteen minutes. The helicopter usually drank fuel through a far larger hose. When the crewman took the hose back, the chopper’s rotor started turning again. Soon after that, it lifted off into the night. There was lightning ahead to the north, and Larson was just as happy that he wasn’t flying there. He let Clark handle the fueling while he went inside to make a telephone call. The funny part was that he’d even make money off the deal. Except that there was nothing funny about anything that had happened during the preceding month.
“Okay,” PJ said into the intercom. “That’s the last pit stop, and we’re heading for home.”
“Engine temps aren’t all that great,” Willis said. The T-64-GE- 7 engines were designed to burn aviation kerosene, not the more volatile and dangerous high-octane gas used by private planes. The manufacturer’s warranty said that you could use that fuel for thirty hours before the burner cans were crisped down to ashes, but the warranty didn’t say anything about bad valve springs and P3 loss.
“Looks like we’re going to cool ’em down just fine,” the colonel said, nodding at the weather ahead.
“Thinking positive again, are we, Colonel?” Willis said as coolly as he could manage. It wasn’t just a thunderstorm there, it was a hurricane that stood between them and Panama. On the whole, it was something scarier than being shot at. You couldn’t shoot back at a storm.
“CLAW, this is CAESAR, over,” Johns called on his radio.
“I read you, CAESAR.”
“How’s the weather ahead look?”
“Bad, sir. Recommend that you head west, find a spot to climb over, and try to approach from the Pacific side.”
Willis scanned the navigational display. “Uh-uh.”
“CLAW, we just gained about five-kay pounds in weight. We, uh, looks like we need another way.”
“Sir, the storm is moving west at fifteen knots, and your course to Panama takes you into the lower-right quadrant.”
Headwinds all the way, PJ told himself.
“Give me a number.”
“Estimated peak winds on your course home are seven-zero knots.”
“Great!” Willis observed. “That makes us marginal for Panama, sir. Very damned marginal.”
Johns nodded. The winds were bad enough. The rain that came with them would greatly reduce engine efficiency. His flight range might be less than half of what it should be ... no way he could tank in the storm ... the smart move would be to find a place to land and stay there, but he couldn’t do that either.... Johns keyed his radio yet again.
“CLAW, this is CAESAR. We are heading for Alternate One.”
“Are you out of your skull?” Francie Montaigne replied.
“I don’t like it, sir,” Willis said.
“Fine. You can testify to that effect someday. It’s only a hundred miles off the coast, and if it doesn’t work, we’ll use the winds to slingshot us around. CLAW, I need a position check on Alternate One.”
“You crazy fucker,” Montaigne breathed. To her communications people: “Call up Alternate One. I need a position check and I need it now.”
Murray was not having any fun at all. Though Adele wasn’t really a major hurricane, Wegener had told him, it was more than he had ever expected to see. The seas had been forty feet, and though once Panache had looked like a white steel cliff alongside the dock, she now rode like a child’s toy in a bathtub. The FBI agent had a scopolamine patch stuck to his head below and behind his ear to combat motion-sickness, but it wasn’t fighting hard enough at the moment. But Wegener was just sitting in his bridge chair, smoking his pipe like the Old Man of the Sea while Murray held on to the grab-bar over his head, feeling like the man on the flying trapeze.
They were not in their programmed position. Wegener had explained to his visitor that there was only one place they could be. It moved, but that’s where they had to be, and Murray was distantly thankful that the seas weren’t quite as bad as they had been. He worked his way over to the door and looked out at the towering cylinder of cloud.
“Panache, this is CLAW, over,” the speaker said. Wegener rose to take the mike.
“CLAW, this is Panache. Your signal is weak but readable, over.”
“Position check, over.”
Wegener gave it to the pilot, who sounded like a girl, he thought. Christ, they were everywhere now.
“CAESAR is inbound yours.”
“Roger. Please advise CAESAR that conditions are below margins. I say again, it is not good down here at the moment.”
“Roger, copy. Stand by.” The voice came back two minutes later. “Panache, this is CLAW. CAESAR says he wants to try it. If he can’t do it, he plans to HIFR. Can you handle that, over.”
“That’s affirmative, we can sure as hell try. Give me an ETA, over.”
“Estimate six-zero minutes.”
“Roger, we’ll be ready. Keep us posted. Out.” Wegener looked across his bridge. “Miss Walters, I have the conn. I want chiefs Oreza and Riley on the bridge, now.”
“Captain has the conn,” Ensign Walters said. She was disappointed. Here she was in the middle of a goddamned tropical storm and having the time of her young life. She wasn’t even ill from it, though many of the crew were. So why couldn’t the skipper let her keep the goddamned conn?
“Left standard rudder,” Wegener ordered. “Come to new course three-three-five. All ahead two-thirds.”
“Left standard rudder, aye, coming to new course three-three-five.” The helmsman turned the wheel, then reached for the throttle controls. “Two thirds, sir.”
“Very well. How you feel, Obrecki?” the skipper asked.
“Hell of a coaster, but I’m wondering when the ride is going to stop, sir.” The youngster grinned, but didn’t take his eyes off the compass.
“You’re doing just fine. Let me know if you get tired, though.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Oreza and Riley appeared a minute later. “What gives?” the former asked.
“We go to flight quarters in thirty minutes,” the captain told them.
“Oh, fuck!” Riley observed. “Excuse me, Red, but ... shit!”
“Okay, Master Chief, now that we’ve gotten that behind us, I’m depending on you to get it done,” Wegener said sternly. Riley accepted the rebuke like the pro he was.
“Beg pardon, Cap’n, you’ll get my best shot. Put the XO in the tower?”
Wegener nodded. The executive officer was the best man to command the evolution from the flight-control station. “Go get him.” Riley left and Wegener turned to his quartermaster. “Portagee, I want you on the wheel when we go Hotel Corpin. I’ll have the conn.”
“Sir, there ain’t no Hotel Corpin.”
“That’s why you’re on the wheel. Relieve Obrecki in half an hour and get a feel for her. We gotta give him the best target we can.”
“Jesus.” Oreza looked out the windows. “You got it, Red.”
Johns held the aircraft down, staying a scant five hundred feet above ground level. He disengaged the automatic flight controls, trusting more to his skill and instinct now, leaving the throttle to Willis and concentrating on his instruments as much as he could. It started in an instant. One moment they were flying in clear air, the next there was rain pelting the aircraft.
“This isn’t so bad,” Johns lied outrageously over the intercom.
“They even pay us to do it,” Willis agreed with no small irony.
PJ checked the navigation display. The winds were from the northwest at the moment, slowing the helicopter somewhat, but that would change. His eyes flickered from the airspeed indicator
to another one that worked off a Doppler-radar aimed at the ground. Satellite and inertial navigation systems told a computer display where he was and where he wanted to go, a red dot. Another screen held the display of a radar system that interrogated the storm ahead, showing the worst sections in red. He’d try to avoid those, but the yellow areas he had to fly through were bad enough.
“Shit!” Willis shouted. Both pilots yanked up on the collective and twisted to maximum power. They’d caught a downdraft. Both pairs of eyes locked onto the dial that gave them vertical velocity in feet per minute. For an instant they were headed down at over a thousand, less than thirty seconds of life for an aircraft at five hundred feet. But microbursts like that are localized phenomena. The helicopter bottomed out at two hundred and clawed its way back up. PJ decided that seven hundred feet was a safer cruise altitude at the moment. He said one word:
“Close.”
Willis grunted by way of reply.
In back, men were strapped down to the floor. Ryan had already done that, and was holding onto his minigun mount as though it would make a difference. He could see out the open door—at nothing, really. Just a mass of gray darkness occasionally lit by lightning. The helicopter was jolting up and down, tossed like a child’s kite by the moving masses of air, except that the helicopter weighed forty thousand pounds. But there was nothing he could do. His fate was in the hands of others, and nothing he knew or did mattered now. Even vomiting didn’t make him feel any better, though he and others were doing that. He just wanted it to be over, and only intellect told him that he really did care how it ended—didn’t he?
The buffeting continued, but the winds shifted as the helicopter penetrated the storm. They had started off from the northeast, but shifted with measurable speed counterclockwise, and were soon on the port quarter of the aircraft. That increased their ground speed. With an airspeed of one-fifty, they now had a ground speed of one-ninety and increasing.
“This is doing wonders for our fuel economy,” Johns noted.
“Fifty miles,” Willis replied.
“CAESAR, this is CLAW, over.”
“Roger, CLAW, we are five-zero miles from Alternate One, and it’s a little bumpy—” A little bumpy, my ass, Captain Montaigne thought, roller-coastering through lighter weather a hundred miles away “—otherwise okay,” Johns reported. “If we cannot make the landing, I think we can try to slingshot out the other side and make for the Panamanian coast.” Johns frowned as more water struck the windshield. Some was ingested into the engines at the same time.
“Flameout! We’ve lost Number Two.”
“Restart it,” Johns said, still trying to be cool. He lowered the nose and traded altitude for speed to get out of the heavy rain. That, too, was supposed to be a local phenomenon. Supposed to be.
“Working on it,” Willis rasped.
“Losing power in Number One,” Johns said. He twisted the throttle all the way and managed to get some of it back. His two-engine aircraft was now operating on one of its engines at 80 percent power. “Let’s get Two back, Captain. We have a hundred foot per minute of ‘down’ right now.”
“Working,” Willis repeated. The rain eased a little, and Number Two started turning and burning again, but delivered only 40 percent. “I think the P3 loss just got worse. We got a shit sandwich here, Colonel. Forty miles. We’re committed to Alternate One now.”
“At least we have an option. I never could swim worth a damn.” PJ’s hands were sweaty now. He could feel them loose inside the handmade gloves. Intercom time: “AC to crew, we’re about fifteen minutes out,” he told them. “One-five minutes out.”
Riley had assembled a group of ten, all experienced crewmen. Each had a safety line around his waist, and Riley checked every knot and buckle personally. Though all had life preservers on, finding a man overboard in these conditions would require a miracle from an especially loving God who had lots of things to keep Him busy tonight, Riley thought. Tie-down chains and more two-inch line was assembled and set in place, already secured to the deck wherever possible. He took the deck crew forward, standing them against the aft-facing wall of the superstructure. “All ready here,” he said over the phone to the XO in flight control. To his people: “If any of you fuck up and go over the side, I’ll fucking jump overboard an’ strangle you myself!”
They were in a whirlpool of wind. According to the navigational display, they were now north of their target, traveling at nearly two hundred fifty knots. The buffet now was the worst it had been. One downburst hurled them down at the black waves until Johns stopped at a bare hundred feet. It was now to the point that the pilot wanted to throw up. He’d never flown in conditions like this, and it was worse than the manuals said it was. “How far?”
“We should be there right now, sir!” Willis said. “Dead south.”
“Okay.” Johns pushed the stick to the left. The sudden change of direction relative to the wind threatened to snap the helicopter over, but he held it and crabbed onto the new course. Two minutes later, they were in the clear.
“Panache, this is CAESAR, where the hell are you?”
“Lights on, everything, now!” Wegener shouted when he heard the call. In a moment Panache was lit up like a Christmas tree.
“Goddamn if you don’t look pretty down there!” the voice said a few seconds later.
Adele was a small, weak, disorganized hurricane, now turning back into a tropical storm due to confused local weather conditions. That made her winds weaker than everyone had feared, but the eye was also small and disorganized, and the eye was what they needed now.
It is a common misconception that the eye of a hurricane is calm. It is not, though after experiencing the powerful winds in the innermost wall of clouds, the fifteen knots of breeze there seem like less than nothing to an observer. But the wind is unsteady and shifting, and the seas in the eye, though not as tall as those in the storm proper, are confused. Wegener had stationed his ship within a mile of the northwest edge of the eye, which was barely four miles across. The storm was moving at about fifteen knots. They had fifteen minutes to recover the helicopter. About the only good news was that the air was clear. No rain was falling, and the crew in the pilothouse could see the waves and allow for them.
Aft at flight control, the executive officer donned his headset and started talking.
“CAESAR, this is Panache. I am the flight-operations officer, and I will guide your approach. We have fifteen knots of wind, and the direction is variable. The ship is pitching and rolling in what looks like about fifteen-foot seas. We have about ten or fifteen minutes to do this, so there’s not that much of a rush.” That last sentence was merely aimed at making the helicopter’s crew feel better. He wondered if anyone could bring this off.
“Skipper, a few more knots and I can hold her a little steadier,” Portagee reported at the wheel.
“We can’t run out of the eye.”
“I know that, sir, but I need a little more way on.”
Wegener went outside to look. The helicopter was visible now, its strobes blinking in the darkness as it circled the ship to allow the pilot to size things up. If anything screws this up, it’s going to be the roll, Wegener realized. Portagee was right about the speed. “Two-thirds,” he called back inside.
“Christ, that’s a little boat,” Johns heard Willis breathe.
“Just so the oars ain’t in the way.” PJ took the helicopter down, circling one last time and coming to a straight course dead aft of the cutter. He leveled out at one hundred feet and found that he couldn’t hover very well. He lacked the power, and the aircraft wavered left and right when he tried.
“Hold that damned boat steady!” he said over the radio circuit.
“We are trying, sir,” the XO replied. “We have the wind off the port bow at the moment. I recommend you come in from the portside and stay at an angle to the deck all the way in.”
“Roger, I can see why.” Johns adjusted power one more time and moved in.
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br /> “Okay, let’s move!” Riley told his men. They divided into three teams, one for each of the helicopter’s wheel assemblies.
The deck, Johns saw, was not quite large enough for a fore-and-aft landing, but by angling his approach he could plant all six wheels on the black surface. He came in slowly, fifteen knots faster than the ship to start, and sloughing that off as he closed, but the wind shifted and turned the helicopter. Johns swore and turned fully away to try again.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I have some power problems here.”
“Roger, take your time, sir,” the XO replied.
PJ started again, a thousand yards out. The approach this time went well. He flared the aircraft a hundred yards aft to drop off excess speed, then flattened out and eased forward. His main gear touched just where he wanted, but the ship rolled hard and threw the aircraft to starboard. Instinctively PJ hit power and collective to lift free of the deck. He shouldn’t have, and knew it even as he did so.
“This is hard,” he said over the radio, managing not to curse as he brought the chopper back around.
“Shame we don’t have more time to practice,” the Coast Guard officer agreed. “That was a good, smooth approach. The ship just took a bad roll on us. Do that one more time, you’ll be just fine.”
“Okay, one more time.” PJ came in again.
The ship was rolling twenty degrees left and right despite her stabilizers and bilge keels, but Johns fixed his eyes on the center of the target area, which wasn’t rolling at all, just a fixed point in space. That had to be the trick, he told himself, pick the spot that isn’t moving. Again he flared out to kill off speed and inched forward. Just as he approached the deck, his eyes shifted to where the nosewheels had to hit, and slammed the collective down. It felt almost as bad as a crash, but the collective held the chopper in place.