Fearing that my uncontrollable giggling would alert him I staked out down on the lawn and watched as he climbed the stairs. By the time he was inserting his room key I had followed him up and was peering from around a corner. I sprinted down to his window as he entered the dark room and shut the door behind him.
The encounter began with a sharp imprecation followed by a sound like a rocking chair coming down on a cat's tail. Then the grenades went off. The struggle instantly escalated into an awful pandemonium of thumps, crashes, tears, screams, and grunts. Listening to the clamor of falling furniture and stampeding feet, I leaned close to the window and saw the curtains suddenly jerk, then plunge to the floor bearing a terrified kooty. Soon the door blew inward as if the room had been sucked of its air and two screeching streaks of fur propelled past me at the speed of heat and catapulted over the ledge.
I lowered myself to the deck on weakened knees holding my ribs in the delightful pain of reckless laughter, as the haggard Venn, ignoring me, emerged and leaned against his rail. A wretched thing I was, lying there beside him helplessly guffawing, but I caught a breath and paused long enough to comment on what cuddly creatures they were. But then the third kooty came bounding from the room and blew out past Venn's boots into the airspace over the lawn like a torpedo shot from the deck of a destroyer, and again I was beset with hysteria.
Still gazing toward the jungle, Venn extracted his tobacco can and loaded an enormous chew but said not a word to me until after I had assessed the battle damage to his room. "You know," he spat, then continued in a low-toned, contemplative voice, as if the foregoing had never occurred, as if he were merely picking up where yesterday's musings were left off, "I'd like to turn some of them rascals loose down in Walthall County."
Soon afterward the jets came. The navs left us. Panama and the kootymongas became memories. The day fliers remained distinct from the night fliers, but many faces changed. We flew the jets either around the flagpole or around the world, it seemed, seldom in between and never again to Bull Run Drop Zone. It was deactivated.
We grieved for the loss of the Hercules. But the old colonel was right. The airplane we're in is indeed a good airplane. I'm just glad to be here.
And of the chicken heist? I know who did it. But name, rank, and service number are all you'll get out of me.
Thirteen.
Eye of the Storm
scud: NATO designator for the Soviet SS-1, short range mobile launched surface to surface ballistic missile.
scud: (skud), v.i. [scudded, scudding], 1. to run or move swiftly. 2. to be driven or run before the wind.
My roomie, Mike Hall, and I are awakened by running and shouting in the hallway. Its 0200 local time on January 16, a day since President Bush's January 15 deadline had passed. We fling open the door and learn from a passerby that the mother of all battles is at last under way. Mike rushes to turn on the TV, but all we see is a test signal. It must be on the radio. Mike then dives for the clock radio, but after fiddling frantically with it, he declares it's "tango uniform." We finally find a good radio in the laundry room and requisition it back to our hole. We quickly learn that massive allied air strikes are in progress in Kuwait and Iraq. Even after all the months of preparation, the reality is hard to grasp. This is no skirmish, no antiterrorist operation, and not a guerrilla action. It is a massive, full-blown conventional war, complete with killing fields. Later the TV comes to life, and we watch with the world as the Persian Gulf furiously explodes. The whole thing is incredible. Even after the months of flying the desert missions, I have trouble believing it is happening.
While devouring the news reports, Mike and I speculate as to what the immediate future holds for us. We recall our squadron commander, Lieutenant Colonel Dwight Sisk, briefing us about this mission prior to departure. Though hostile action was imminent, Dwight told us he had been assured that MAC would not risk its "strategic airlift assets" (big jets) during the early, uncertain days of the war. And again, when we arrived here at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, the stage manager had echoed the concern. "Relax," we were told. "Until some of the smoke settles, you'll probably get a breather, at the most, maybe a run back to the States." We wonder how such a massive deployed force could go even a few days without strategic airlift support. We've been in uniform too long to swallow everything they feed us, but we accept onlooker status for the next few days.
We finally get to sleep in the late morning, but at about 1500 we are alerted by the command post for what we assume will be an Atlantic crossing. We should know better. In spite of what we have been told to expect, the destination is Dhahran. We are, of course, very familiar with the place. We've been there many times. But in light of the developments of the previous hours, the orders are ominous.
While Mike and the two engineers, Larry Bleakney and Dave Cameron, preflight the Starlizzard, Rob Cox, the other pilot, and I, meet our rent-a-pilot and proceed to the CP for our intel briefing.
Intel updates us on the status of hostilities and issues our SPINS. The briefing, usually a ho-hum affair, has our attention thoroughly captured this time. We are about to plunge into what we think is just the edge of the maelstrom known now as Desert Storm, but I know that in modern warfare, the edges are ill defined. I must admit I'm excited about this, but I have a gut feeling that the whole thing is pregnant with disaster. I figure that if I'm to be a casualty of this mess, it will likely be a result of our own inattentiveness or of friendly fire, either of which is just as terminal as an Iraqi bullet.
The three of us report to the jet at 1700 and find the rest of the crew wrapping up their preflight duties. The soldiers have gone to the chow hall and left a guard at the jet to watch over their weapons. Dave warns us that the guard is particularly jumpy and has been pacing nervously and mumbling to himself. We don't know if he is worried about the war or the flight, but he has a loaded M-16 and bears watching.
At 1800 hours German local, with twenty-five "grunts," 35,000 pounds of cargo, and 158,000 pounds of fuel aboard, we taxi onto the runway in an extremely heavy condition known as EWP gross weight. EWP means "emergency war planning." Not just any war, mind you, but emergency war. What more grave and desperate endeavor can the human race be involved in than emergency war? Because EWP is such a risky operation, from the standpoint of structural stress and reduced performance, I always fancied that if we ever used it, the world would most surely be at the brink of nuclear war. But I was wrong. It wasn't much of a war, but it was all we had. And it had obviously been determined that, to that end, we and our C-141s were expendable.
This EWP thing is serious business. The wings have to lift ten tons more than what they are normally designed to do. Metal is a funny thing. Unlike wood, which forgets about stress, metal remembers, and the damage is cumulative. Add the effect of the cracks that already exist in the spars and the potential for a catastrophic failure begins to loom as a greater possibility. It may not happen today, but next week or next year disaster could result from stresses accumulated today, especially if the airplane is henceforth subjected to marginal conditions such as turbulence. And the stress of EWP operations doesn't apply only to the wings.
For an EWP takeoff, we have to use maximum takeoff-rated thrust, or TRT. This is our maximum safe power. If we pushed the throttles as far as they will go, the engines may rip themselves apart under the tremendous internal heat and pressures. But even at TRT the engine turbine blades, under the increased heat and centrifugal force, actually become stretched and cracked. The blades can sling off the compressor and turbine wheels, causing massive engine disintegration. We know that every TRT takeoff reduces engine life and increases the possibly of a catastrophic engine failure, so whenever possible we take off with reduced thrust. But today we wouldn't get airborne by the French border with reduced thrust.