“The Reds won’t send equipment down here, much as they want the strait.” Vossi was very confident. He was barely half Scragger’s age and almost twice his size. “They won’t so long as we tell them they’d better the hell not - and nave airplanes and task forces and the will to use them.” He squinted down through the haze. “Hey, Scrag, lookit.”
The huge supertanker was heavily burdened, low in the water, steaming ponderously outward bound toward Hormuz. “I’ll bet she’s five hundred thousand tons or more.” They watched her for a moment. Sixty percent of the free world’s oil went through this shallow, narrow waterway between Iran and Oman, barely fifteen miles across where the neck was navigable. Twenty million barrels a day. Every day.
“You think they’ll ever build a million-ton tanker, Scrag?” “Sure. Sure they’ll build her if they want, Ed.” The ship passed below them. “She was flying a Liberian flag,” Scragger said absently. “You got eyes like an eagle.”
“It’s all my clean living, sport.” Scragger glanced around into the cabin. All the passengers were in their seats, belts on, regulation Mae West life jackets on, ear protectors on, reading or looking out of the windows. Everything normal, he thought. Yes, and instruments’re normal, sounds’re normal, I’m normal and so’s Ed. Then why’m I itchy? he asked himself, turning back once more.
Because of the task force, because of Kish radar, because of the passengers, because it’s your birthday, and most of all because you’re airborne and the only way you stay alive airborne is to be itchy. Amen. He laughed out loud. “What’s up, Scrag?”
“You’re up, that’s wot. So you think you’re a pilot, right?” “Sure, Scrag,” Vossi said cautiously.
“Okay. You’ve pegged Siri Three?”
Vossi grinned and pointed at the distant rig that was barely visible in the haze, slightly east of the cluster.
Scragger beamed. “Then close your eyes.”
“Aw c’me on, Scrag, sure this’s a check flight but how about le - ” “I got control,” Scragger said happily. Instantly Vossi relinquished the controls. “Now close your eyes ‘cause you’re under training.” Confidently the young man took a last careful look at the target rig, adjusted his headset, took off his dark glasses, and obeyed.
Scragger handed Vossi the special pair of dark goggles he had had made. “Here, put ‘em on and don’t open your eyes till I say. Get ready to take control.”
Vossi put on the goggles, and smoothly, still with his eyes closed, his hands and feet reached out, barely touching the controls as he knew Scragger liked. “Okay. Ready, Scrag.”
“You got her.”
At once Vossi took over the controls, firmly and lightly, and was pleased that the transition was smooth, the airplane staying straight and level. He was flying now with only his ears to guide him, trying to anticipate the slightest variation in engine note - slowing down or speeding up - that would indicate he was climbing or descending. Now a small change. He anticipated nicely, almost sensing it before it happened, that the pitch was rising, therefore the engines were gathering speed and therefore the chopper was diving. He made the correction and brought her level again. “Good on you, sport,” Scragger said approvingly. “Now open your eyes.” Vossi had expected the usual training glasses that excluded outside visibility but allowed you to see the instruments. He found himself in total blackness. In sudden panic, his concentration vanished and with it his coordination. For a split second he was totally disoriented, his stomach reeling as he knew the airplane would reel. But it didn’t. The controls stayed rock firm in Scragger’s hands that he had not felt on the controls. “Jesssus,” Vossi gasped, fighting his nausea, automatically reaching up to tear off the goggles.
“Keep ‘em on! Ed, this’s an emergency, you’re the pilot, the only pilot aboard and you’re in trouble - you can’t see. Wot’re you going to do? Take the controls! Come on! Emergency!”
There was bile in Vossi’s mouth and he spat it out, his hands and feet nervous. He took the controls, overcorrected, and almost cried out in panic as they lurched, for he was expecting that Scragger would still be monitoring them. But he wasn’t. Again Vossi overcorrected, totally disoriented. This time Scragger minimized the mistake.
“Settle down, Ed,” he ordered. “Listen to the bloody engine! Get your hands and feet in tune.” Then more gently: “Steady now, you’re doing fine, steady now. You can vomit later. You’re in an emergency, you’ve got to put her down, and you got thirteen passengers aft. Me, I’m here beside you but I’m not a bleeding pilot, now wot you going to do?”
Vossi’s hands and feet were together again and his ears listening to the engine. “I can’t see but you can?”
“Right.”
“Then you can talk me down!”
“Right!” Scragger’s voice edged. “Course you got to ask the right questions. Kish Control, HST leaving one thousand for Siri Three.”
“Roger, HST.”
Scragger’s voice became different. “My name’s Burt from now on. I’m a roustabout off one of the rigs. I know nothing about flying but I can read a dial - if you tell me proper where to look.”
Happily Vossi hurled himself into the game and asked the right questions, “Burt” forcing him to use the limits of his knowledge of flight control, cockpit control, where the dials were, making him ask what only an amateur could understand and answer. From time to time when he was not accurate enough, Burt, with rising hysteria would screech, “Jesus, I can’t find the dial, which dial for Christ’s sake, they’re all the bloody same! Explain again, explain slower, oh, God we’re all going to die. …” For Vossi the darkness fed on darkness. Time became stretched, no friendly dials or needles to reassure him, nothing but the voice forcing him to his own utmost limits.
When they were at fifty feet on their approach, Burt calling out landing advice, Vossi was nauseous, terrified in the darkness, knowing that the tiny landing circle on the oil rig was coming up to meet him. You’ve still time to abort, to put on power and get to hell out of here and wait it out aloft, but for how long?
“Now you’re ten feet up and ten yards away just like you wanted.” At once Vossi put her into hover, the sweat pouring off him. “You’re perfect, just over the dead center, just like you wanted.” The blackness had never been more intense. Nor his fear. Vossi muttered a prayer. Gently he eased off power. It seemed to take a lifetime and another and another and then the skids touched and they were down. For an instant he didn’t believe it. His relief was so intense that he almost wept for joy. Then, from a great distance, he heard Scragger’s real voice and felt the controls taken over. “I got her, sport! That was bloody good, Ed. Ten out of ten. I’ll take her now.”
Ed Vossi pulled off the goggles. He was soaking, his face chalky, and he slumped in his seat, hardly seeing the activity on the working rig before him, the heavy rope net spread over the landing pad that was a bare thirty yards in diameter. Jesus, I’m down, we’re down and safe.
Scragger had put the engines to idle; no need to shut down as this was a short stop. He was humming “Waltzing Matilda” which he did only when he was very pleased. The lad did very well, he thought, his flying’s bonzer. But how fast will he recover? Always wise to know, and where his balls are - when you fly with someone.
He turned and gave the thumbs-up to the man in the side front seat of the cabin, one of the French engineers who had to check electrical pumping equipment that had just been installed on this rig. The rest of the passengers waited patiently. Four were Japanese, guests of the French officials and engineers from EPF. Scragger had been disquieted about carrying Japanese - pulled back to memories of his war days, memories of Australian losses in the Pacific war and the thousands who died in the Japanese POW camps and on the Burma railway. Murders more like, he told himself darkly, then turned his attention to the off-loading. The engineer had opened the door and was now helping Iranian deck laborers take packing cases from the cargo hatch. It was hot and humid on the deck, enervating, and the air stank of oil fumes. In the cockpit it was scorching as usual, humidity bad, but Scragger was comfortable. The engines were idling and sounding sweet. He glanced at Vossi, still slumped in his seat, his hands behind his neck, gathering himself.