Clark let out an even breath and hit the transmit button.
“I’m surprised you remember that conversation, Sammy. In principle it’s a piece of cake. Your biggest challenge is stopping your forward progress right over the truck, so you’re flying perfect formation with him, because if you get it wrong, he’ll pull away from you as you slow down. So I’d recommend you don’t try to feather the props or change the power setting from whatever works, but also don’t take too much time. Fly her all the way on, and when you plop it on the trailer, hold full back pressure to keep her there. Remember, you’re going to get one hell of a burble from the truck, so it won’t be smooth air, and the bow wave will tend to kick you up like an updraft just at the last second.”
“Got it.”
“What I’d do is keep a little forward momentum and just plan to fly it right onto the trailer, and aim to kind of smash your nose into the forward guard of the trailer at maybe up to ten knots closing speed. Not much more.”
“I was thinking the same thing, Clark. I know there won’t be much runway left to work with. It’s just that I…” There was a sigh, and the transmission ended.
“Sam? Remember the frequency we discussed last summer that the Military Airlift Command used to use on VHF?”
There was a hesitation.
“Yes. Why?”
“Meet you there, if you can change the radio.”
“I’ll use number two.”
Clark waited a few seconds for Sam to swap the frequencies before calling.
“I’m here, Clark.”
“Sam, you’re doubting your ability to do this, right?”
Many seconds of dead air went by before Sam triggered his transmitter again.
“Yeah, I am. I don’t mind telling you I’m scared to death.”
Clark steeled himself and took a deep breath. “Sammy, you’re an incredible pilot, and this is nothing more than a new challenge. It doesn’t have to be pretty or perfect. This isn’t a check ride, and there are no procedures. Just common sense and judgment, which you’ve got, and skill, which you have in spades. Trust yourself, keep breathing steadily, and don’t pay a minute’s more attention to whether or not you can do it safely, because you can. Okay?”
“I appreciate the pep talk—”
“Sam, it’s just aerodynamics. We’re not waiting for a jury.”
“One mistake and I’m dead, Clark!” he said, his voice trembling slightly, almost undetectably.
“Sam, quit feeling sorry for yourself!”
“I’m not feeling sorry for myself. Jeez! Don’t you understand what I’m facing? The wing may come off at any second, or the engines stop running. I’m screwed, Clark!”
“No, you’re screwed up, and you’re going to stop thinking like this. You’re going to do the best job of preparing as humanly possible; then you’re going to go land that thing on that truck like you do it every day. Hell, Sammy, in the low-level environment we live in every day any single decision could kill you. You know that! You’re used to that part of the job. So, this is a bit unique, but the same challenge. Now go back to the main frequency and get on with it.”
“Roger.”
Clark switched back and called Helibase.
The voice from Helibase below replied instantly.
“Go, Tanker Eighty-eight.”
“Can you get a handheld aviation radio to the driver so the driver can alert Sam when he’s going to have to brake at the end? Give him a few seconds to pull up if it’s not working?”
“Already done it,” was the reply. “Hopefully you’ll be happy to know that our physics major is in the truck cab with a radio and a stopwatch.”
For the first time in many minutes the frequency fell silent. The inverted Baron was flying north and descending as Clark throttled back his four engines and followed in a gentle descent, waiting for the turn back to the south.
“What are his chances?” Rusty asked over the interphone. Clark glanced at him in irritation. It was an unspoken rule fueled by ego and testosterone that in the throes of a life-threatening aviation emergency, pilots did not discuss the odds of living through what might be coming.
But Rusty was unapologetic.
“I think he’s got a good chance, don’t you?”
Clark gave up and nodded. “Yeah. Provided, when his tail hits concrete, he’s in the right position.”
“You think the tail will hit first?”
“Maybe.”
“I think the truck’s trailer surface is probably high enough so that won’t happen. The Baron’s vertical tail is stubby.”
The Baron was sliding into a left turn now, and Clark followed, keeping the big DC-6B outside the arc of his turn and well within view. Ahead at the airport, Clark could see two Skycranes lifting off with something hanging underneath between them.
“Gear down, before-landing checklist, and flaps forty,” Clark ordered. Rusty repeated the commands and positioned the controls, monitoring the gear lights before starting the checklist items.
“Down and three green,” he reported, meaning that all three wheels of the landing gear were down and locked in place.
“Roger, down and three green.”
The Baron was falling back in the side windows as Sam decelerated to his final approach speed of 110 knots, just barely enough airspeed to keep the big Douglas in the air. Clark throttled up his engines against the increased drag of the flaps and gear and checked the airspeed at 115 knots.
“Sam, this is Clark. I’ll call your airspeed, okay?”
“Thanks.”
“You’re one hundred fourteen and steady. You have the visual glide slope lights?”
“Roger, I have the VASI,” Sam said, repeating the acronym for the visual approach slope indicator, a series of three lights stacked vertically that were showing him to be exactly on the angled path to the runway’s end.
“This…is the weirdest approach I’ve ever flown!” Sam said. “I’m hanging like a bat, everything seems reversed, and yet somehow this is getting comfortable. Go figure.”
“We’re four miles out, Sam. Keep her coming,” Clark said, as the voice of the Helibase Operations manager returned to the frequency.
“Lead Four-Two, everything’s prepared and ready. Aim for about the three-thousand-foot area of the runway, and just like a forward pass play, the truck should be there when you get there.”
“Roger. Ah, Jackson Hole traffic, Baron One Four Seven Zulu is short final, runway one eight, full stop I hope, Jackson Hole.”
“Sam, I think they know you’re coming,” Clark chuckled into his mike.
Sam unconsciously keyed his transmitter, his microphone picking up and broadcasting his rapid, somewhat ragged breathing as he talked to himself.
“Okay…okay…flatten it a bit…the flatbed’s sitting on the end. When is he gonna go? I guess…there! He’s moving. Why isn’t Clark calling airspeed? Oh.”
Sam realized he’d been squeezing the transmitter rocker switch and let up, clearing the radio frequency for a response.
Clark jumped in instantly.
“Sam, your speed is good at one twelve. Stay off the transmit button. Don’t try to reply to me. You’re one mile out, speed one hundred ten…right on. Positioning good.”
Sam tried to shift his weight against the shoulder harness that was cutting off circulation, but only succeeded in creating a more severe pain in his leg from the seat belt. The top of his head was brushing the ceiling of the cockpit, and for the first time since qualifying as a lead-plane pilot, he wished he was wearing a helmet.
Okay…keep it steady…remember the tail’s hanging down…stay above the truck’s level.
The threshold was crossing his vision at the top of the windscreen now, the truck still more than a thousand feet ahead, twin plumes of black smoke streaming from the twin silver stacks.
“One hundred eight knots,” Clark reported from somewhere overhead.
Sam pushed on the yoke, a bit too hard at first, and
realized that the runway was now too far above him. He brought the yoke back a bit, letting the Baron settle closer, making sure he could still see the top of the eighteen-wheeler’s cab less than five hundred feet ahead.
Closing speed’s still high, but that’s okay, he’s still accelerating, he thought.
Sam could see the runway’s remaining distance markers, and the five-thousand-foot marker had just come into view ahead. The dynamics of what he was about to attempt seemed straightforward suddenly, as if scales had fallen from his eyes and the job was essentially simple. He felt a calm surround him, a certainty of purpose and a supreme confidence that even permitted the thought of an orderly go-around. He no longer thought about the tenuous left wing. In some perverse way he was almost enjoying the challenge, not unlike the feeling he’d had on his first solo flight, scared to death and exhilarated at the same moment. It was as if he’d come too far for Providence to turn against him, even though that thought was coupled with an understanding of the unbelievably high odds against his living through this.
The truck was just ahead, at the top of his windscreen and upside down, of course, but slowing as he slid toward it. He could feel his hand retarding the throttles slightly as Clark Maxwell called out his airspeed as one hundred eight, a tiny bit slow.
Even the turbulence from the stiff winds seemed handleable, and he automatically compensated, bringing the Baron now just past the trailing edge of the trailer and still closing, with perhaps less than a fifteen-knot difference in speed between the two vehicles. The aircraft was hanging a bit too high, fifteen or twenty feet above the speeding trailer. He saw the four-thousand-foot-remaining marker slide past and began relaxing a tiny bit of forward pressure on the control yoke to let the Baron descend, as he aimed the nose to crunch into the forward guard of the forty-foot-long trailer.
Too fast! he thought, pulling back on the throttles a bit more.
But the trailer continued to slip by beneath him, and the speeds weren’t matching. The cab was ahead now, at the top of his windscreen. His aim point disappeared as he soared too far in front of the truck. He grabbed the throttles, yanking them back to idle.
One second the truck had been sliding behind him, now it was accelerating out ahead of him, and he could feel the need for more forward pressure to stay airborne.
Down! Just plunk it down! He pulled too hard on the yoke, causing a momentary dive that scared him into pulsing the yoke back forward as he scooped up the throttles and jammed them forward to get more speed.
Sam saw the two-thousand-foot marker pass by.
Once again he tried to stay above the level of the flatbed and the truck cab, but a violent swirl of turbulent air streaming off the speeding truck caught him and without warning his inverted wings were banked perhaps twenty degrees to the runway as he struggled to right them and climb—push—back to a safe altitude. There was grass in the windscreen now and the truck disappearing to his left as he fought to level the wings and climb, his finger finding the transmit button by rote.
“Waving off! I’m…ah…going around. I couldn’t quite make it work.” He let up on the transmit button momentarily as he began a serious climb back to traffic pattern altitude of fifteen hundred feet above the terrain.
“Roger, Four-Two. We’ll reposition the truck,” the Operations manager said. “You do want to try it again this way?”
“Yes. Everything the same. I’ll get it this time.”
Sam goaded the Baron to climb as he tried to ignore the pain of the straps cutting into him. He could see the DC-6B still shadowing him to the right and heard the Skycrane pilot saying he and his companion were taking off.
His shoulders hurt, his head was pounding, and the calm he had felt was still there, but the beginnings of a renewed urgency to end this agony was making itself felt in the corner of his psyche, and he tried to bat at it, to keep it from influencing him.
Sam climbed back to fifteen hundred feet and completed his turn north. The confusion of which way to bank was still dogging him, and almost every turn started with a bank in the wrong direction.
Sam triggered the transmitter.
“Lead Four-Two, on downwind. Please tell me when he’s repositioned.”
“Four-Two, the winds have dropped a bit. That may explain your overshoot. They’re showing steady now down the runway at twenty-two knots. We’ll work out the different start point for the truck.”
“How’re you doing, Sammy?”
Clark’s deep voice was like a soothing balm, a rescue in itself.
“Physically, this is a new adventure in pain, Clark, but otherwise, as long as this old girl holds together, I’m…hold it…”
Something had changed in the hum of the left engine, and he tensed as it changed again, the power surging for a few seconds, then returning. Even in the middle of the surreal upside-down cockpit a familiar instinct took over and guided his eyes to the fuel tank gauges, which were wholly unreliable.
He glanced at the fuel selector as well, finding nothing wrong.
The engine had recovered, but the cause of the fluctuation could be anything, including the possibility that whatever had been keeping the fuel flowing to the engines was about to stop doing so.
Fuel boost pumps! Sam reached to the forward panel and flicked on the boost pumps that provided positive fuel pressure to the engines, holding his breath.
The engines remained steady, and he slowly let his breath out again.
The truck was reaching the approach end and would be in position momentarily, and he could see something else in the distance, two Skycranes orbiting with something strung between them.
“Lead Four-Two, this is Skycrane Echo Romeo. There are two of us now with a net slung between us. We’re going to get in position on the south end of the field in case you want to try it, and we’re pretty sure this would work for you. We think we can accelerate to a hundred knots and still have it stay in position.”
“I can see you from here, Skycrane, but…how would I do it?”
“We’ll stay about a hundred feet apart. The net is strong enough to take ten thousand pounds or more, and it’s suspended in four places, like a big trampoline. Don’t ask how. You’d have to fly between us, being really careful not to come up into our rotors, equalize airspeed, and let down onto the sling the same way you were trying to do on that truck.”
“Jesus, guys, will that work?”
“We think so. It’s your call. We’re here.”
“Lead Four-Two, Helibase Ops. The truck is in position again whenever you’re ready.”
“Roger, stand by,” Sam replied, fatigue clouding the necessity of making a decision. Was trying to land on the truck more dangerous than trying to land on an airborne net?
He had almost made it to the bed of the truck. He could do it on the next pass. But landing in an airborne net might be safer, and he realized in a flash of horror that the never-been-done aspect was almost urging him to try it.
This is my life I’m dealing with! he reminded himself. This wasn’t a testosterone check.
No. I’ll try the truck again. I’ll go for the net only if all else fails.
Once more Sam steadied out the Baron on final approach, unaware that an audience of millions was watching over CNN and Fox as two news helicopters hovered off to the west with their lenses trained on him. The links had been set up in less than ten minutes through several ground satellite trucks already in Jackson for the fires, and fed to the cable networks, which put them on air immediately.
“Can anyone think of anything I’ve forgotten?” Sam asked in the blind.
The only answer was the delayed click of Clark Maxwell’s transmitter.
“I think you’re ready, Sam. Nail it for us.”
As before, Sam could see the plumes of black smoke as the truck driver floored his eighteen-wheeler and started down the runway on the unheard command of a spotter on the ground.
He checked his airspeed again, reading 110 knots dead-on. The VASIs were
visible and showing him right on the glide slope. He worked the throttles and increased his descent slightly as he glanced at the altimeter.
Over the threshold at fifty feet, level out and hold…hold…
The truck was a thousand feet ahead, in the top of his windscreen, black smoke streaming out of both stacks as he closed on it, pulling the throttles back slightly. The driver was still accelerating, he could tell, but the closure rate looked reasonable and he held his breath as the back edge of the flatbed passed the top of his windscreen, the closure rate dropping steadily as he held the Baron some fifteen feet above, waiting for precisely the right moment for what he’d planned.
He hadn’t noticed the sandbags before, but now they beckoned as a soft target midway on the flatbed. They formed a cradle just waiting for the top of his fuselage to come to rest nestled within them.
Now!
Sam goosed the throttles, feeling the Baron jump forward in a surge of power and speed for just a second, the truck suddenly beginning to move backward once again in his perspective. It was exactly what he needed to see.
He immediately yanked the throttles to idle and feathered the propellers, simultaneously relaxing his forward pressure on the yoke to bring the top of the fuselage down onto the surface of the trailer and maybe even right into the sandbag cradle. The plan was very precise in his mind.
The Baron’s nose was over the front part of the trailer, but the trailer was beginning to move forward again, and he was still ten feet above it.
He had to walk the upside-down airplane into the cradle faster than he’d planned or impact it too far back and slide off the trailer and onto the runway at nearly a hundred miles per hour. There was very little runway left ahead of the driver, and he knew the truck would have to be stopped very soon.
“Braking in five seconds,” a voice said on the radio. He assumed it was the driver. The seconds were evaporating, but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to just yank at the yoke and plop the aircraft down.
The feeling of utter calm that came over him seemed so completely natural it was easy to surrender to it. The concentration it gave him was suddenly total. There was no thought of an audience watching, nor of the need for anyone’s approval. There was merely the intense desire in those few remaining seconds to do the job and do it well, nestling the top of the fuselage in the sandbag cradle now two or three feet above—or below—him. He could see the front of the sandbag cradle slide into view, and his hands nursed the yoke backward as the last of the runway loomed ahead and a voice from somewhere outside crackled through: “Nail it, Sam! Now! You’re out of time!”
Fire Flight Page 20
