|
"We must have burned an awful lot more than either of us had realized," I said to Jack. "Maybe the muck in the air had an effect on this."
"This means we must abort," Jack replied at last.
"What would you have done different as SAC?" I asked.
"If this had been a SAC training mission," said Jack, "we would have selected a secondary airfield and started again in the morning. Unfortunately, there are no airfields big enough that we can abort to, at least none that are located outside of this poisoned land."
"What about the beaches on the West Coast?" I suggested to Jack after a minute of silence. "The West Coast may still have clean air with the storm front coming in. The West Coast has a long sandy beach right n the middle. If the tide is low, I have a feeling we might be able to land there."
"A feeling!" Jack commented. He shook his head. "It's like the way it was in Nam. We never thought twice about committing huge resources for rescue missions. I think we just blew a fifty-million-dollar airplane. But go ahead, if you have a feeling that's fine with me. At least we have a human element in this equation, something reliable, something to resort to."
Five minutes later we crossed over the mountains to the West Coast. My hunch was right, the visibility was still normal on the windward side of the island. We had a thousand-foot ceiling, no smoke, and no radiation. So, once again, we came in low for an inspection pass. The tide was out. The situation looked good! The risk seemed acceptable.
"What do you think of the beach?" I asked Jack.
"I'd rather try the road that leads onto it," he replied. "If we approach it from the inland side, against the wind, we might make it."
I agreed.
"But is it wide enough?" asked Orlando.
"For the two inner carriages, yes," I to him.
After two overflights it was decided that we would risk it. It was a democratic choice. I send Jennie and Igor back to their lookout stations. They too, feared that the sand might be too soft. However, as we were gliding in on a shallower angle the road appeared not as straight as it had looked before. I goosed the engines, pulled back on the yoke. We were less than a hundred feet off the ground when the giant crate responded and rose into the sky again.
I remembered our holiday on that beach that was now below us. A picture of us riding bicycles on the beach flashed through my mind. My narrow gage tires had never sank into the sand, even when one of the children was riding piggyback on the rattrap. I remembered that riding on the wet sand was like riding the bike on hard pavement.
"We are going to land on the beach!" I announced. I didn't even ask for any approval. I pulled us out of the climb, into a turn, and came around over the beach for our final descent, working against the crosswind to keep the plane level. This technique was something I was good at. I eased the giant bird towards the beach as lightly as a feather and as level as the sea itself. It was important for our success that all sixteen wheels would contact the sand simultaneously.
"Spoilers!" I shouted to Jack when the plane was in position.
"Spoilers active!" he replied.
We were committed now. The plane settled gently. The touchdown was barely noticeable! The sand carried us well! It even provided sufficient braking so that we didn't need the reverse thrust. In fact, as soon we had slowed enough, I wound the engines up once more to full power, and with a final burst of thunder and fury pulled us into a tight turn to get the aircraft as far away from the water as the plane would go in the soft sand that lay beyond the reach of the surf. We came to rest at last in a sea of tall grasses near a pile of logs that would have stopped us anyway.
Next Page
|| - page index -
|| - chapter index -
|| - Exit -
||
 |
Stories about
War
from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche
|
|
|