Arctic Storm Rising

Twenty-Two

Totem One, a four-engine HC-130J Super Hercules combat search-and-rescue aircraft assigned to the Alaska Air National Guard’s 211th Rescue Squadron, rocked and jolted and bounced through the sky. It was flying through the upper fringes of a fierce winter storm blanketing the whole state. Patches of night sky sprinkled with stars appeared and disappeared whenever the plane crossed into towering cloud banks that cut visibility to nil and then came back out into clear air.

“Cripes,” Major Jack “Ripper” Ingalls muttered, gripping the steering yoke tight. “I think General Arcaro hates me.”

His copilot, Captain Laura “Skater” Van Horn, shook her head. “No, he doesn’t hate you, Rip.”

“He doesn’t?”

She smiled. “Nope. His feelings toward you go way beyond simple hatred. In fact, I’d say he despises you with all the passion of a thousand hot, flaming suns.” She nodded out the cockpit windows at the boiling sea of clouds. “I mean, why else assign us a ‘routine’ night training flight — right in the middle of the first really big storm of this season?”

Ingalls laughed. “Well, the general said he thought it’d be a good way to keep our flying skills honed.”

Van Horn snorted. “Uh-huh. And King David told Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah the Hittite, he wanted him to lead in battle because it was an honor.”

“You know, your analysis of this situation isn’t exactly making me feel better about myself, Skater,” Ingalls said. He kept his eyes moving over the cockpit’s multifunction displays and gauges. “Remind me to have you read that Air Force pamphlet on the importance of maintaining high crew morale once we get back to base.”

She pretended to sigh loudly. “What, again?”

“Yes, again,” the HC-130 pilot said firmly, with a quick, sidelong smile.

“You know, touchy-feely stuff like that is probably why Arcaro hates you so much,” Van Horn said with a grin of her own.

Ingalls shrugged. “A man’s gotta do what a—” A sudden alarm and a red caution and warning light cut him off short.

“Number Two engine shutdown,” Van Horn said sharply. She toggled a switch. “Fire handle pulled.” And then another. “Engine Start switch to stop. Fuel pump secured.” Swiftly, she scanned their ACAWS — Advisory, Caution, and Warning System — message text. “Gearbox Two, no oil pressure.”

Ingalls ran his eyes over his own display. “I confirm Gearbox Two, no oil pressure.” He glanced out the cockpit window at their left wing. The six-bladed propeller on the inmost engine was stationary. “Number Two is feathered. No signs of a fire.”

“For small favors, let us be very, very grateful,” Van Horn said devoutly. She glanced at the pilot. “Okay, Rip, what now?”

“Now you take the aircraft,” he said, sounding perfectly calm and in control. “Thus allowing me, as the august aircraft commander, to focus all my attention on managing this deplorable situation.”

She nodded, settling her hands firmly on the yoke in front of her and giving it a quick shake to verify that she did indeed have her hands on the yoke. “Yes, sir. I have the aircraft.”

“You have the aircraft, Captain,” Ingalls confirmed formally, slightly relaxing his own grip. He keyed his radio mike. “Elmendorf Control, this is Totem One. I am declaring an inflight emergency. We’ve lost our Number Two engine. No fire, repeat, no fire.”

“Copy that, Totem,” an air traffic controller replied. “Advise your intention.”

Ingalls considered that. Technically, their HC-130J was rated to continue missions with the loss of a single engine. That was especially true for this training flight, without any heavy cargo or passengers aboard the aircraft. But the idea of trying to make it back to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, nearly five hundred nautical miles away, in the middle of a storm, wasn’t that appealing — especially down one engine for unknown causes. If one engine could crap out like this, there was no guarantee that a second and a third wouldn’t do the same thing at the worst possible moment. Eielson Air Force Base at Fairbanks was considerably closer, but it would still take them forty-five minutes to get there. And the most direct flight path to Eielson meant crossing the Brooks Range, some of the highest and most rugged country in all of Alaska. Yeah, no thanks on that, he decided.

“What’s the status of Deadhorse?” he radioed. The airport serving the Prudhoe Bay oil fields was just sixty nautical miles northeast of their current position. It didn’t have a control tower, but at least the runway was paved.

“Deadhorse is shut down,” the controller reported. “Visibility is currently nil, with blowing snow and very high winds.”

“Crap,” Ingalls muttered. “Okay, how about Barter Island?”

“Wait one.”

Van Horn shook her head. “Barter Island? Man, that’s the back end of nowhere. I’ve flown in there a couple of times. It’s just a gravel strip.” The aircraft hit another pocket of turbulence and shook from end to end. “Which on a night like this is going to be ass-deep in snow and ice.”

Ingalls shrugged. “Right now, I’ll take just about any runway in a storm, Skater. And if we lose another engine, I’m gonna be happy if we can even find some relatively flat piece of tundra to set down on.”

“Totem, this is Elmendorf,” the air controller’s voice said through his headset. “There’s a small security detachment posted at the radar station there. I just checked with them. They report the storm’s died down a little there, with north winds diminishing to about half of what they were an hour ago. The ceiling’s only around fifteen hundred feet and visibility’s not great, maybe a mile, maybe less. There may also be debris on the runway. Our guys are moving out now to check that and clear the strip if necessary — but they say it’ll take some time.”

“Copy that, Elmendorf,” Ingalls said, pulling up Barter Island on his navigation display. “Tell that security detachment we’re heading their way. We should be overhead in about thirty minutes. Whatever they can do to clear the runway by then will be much appreciated, but we’re going to try to set this crate down fast… before the storm closes in again.”

“Understood, Totem,” the controller replied. “And good luck.”

Ingalls glanced across the cockpit. “Okay, Skater, let’s come to zero-four-five. But take it real easy on your turn, okay? Keep your angle of bank well under twenty-five degrees and watch your airspeed and power settings.”

“Copy that,” Van Horn said tightly. They needed to bank left, which meant turning into their dead Number Two engine. With the aircraft’s three other engines still operational, that was doable. Still, extreme caution was necessary to avoid any risk of losing control due to asymmetric thrust. Slowly, she turned her steering yoke. Her eyes darted across her displays and gauges to make sure there were no other developing problems.

Gingerly, the Super Hercules rolled gently left — gradually coming around to the northeast as it headed directly toward Barter Island through a storm-cloud-covered night sky.

Through his night vision goggles, Captain Nick Flynn could just about make out the far end of the snow-covered runway. Beyond that, a glittering haze of blowing snow and ice crystals obscured everything. Since he was roughly two-thirds of the way down the strip, he estimated that put current visibility at a little more than half a mile. The wind must be starting to strengthen again, he thought grimly. Not exactly great timing, since that crippled HC-130J couldn’t be more than a few minutes out.

Pairs of glowing yellow lights stretched away in both directions. They marked the edges of the hundred-foot-wide runway. Silhouetted against those lights, the soldiers and airmen of his Joint Force team were frantically clearing away pieces of windblown debris that littered the snow. The fierce blizzard that had been pounding Kaktovik and the radar station for more than two days had torn shingles, pieces of metal siding, canvas tarps, and even satellite dishes loose, along with bags of trash, broken-down cardboard boxes, empty barrels, and other abandoned objects — sending them all skittering across the open tundra. This mix of FOD, foreign object debris, was now a serious threat to the big turboprop headed here for an emergency landing. Metal shards or other solid trash sucked into the Super Hercules’s propellers or engine intakes during landing could easily cause catastrophic damage.

Painfully aware that they were running very low on time to get this job done, Flynn got back to work. He leaned over, grabbed a bent section of siding half buried in the surface, and yanked hard. Nothing. The damn thing didn’t move an inch. Grunting, he tightened his grip and yanked even harder. This time it broke free from the ice and came loose in his gloved hands. Like a discus thrower, he spun around in a single motion and hurled the piece of crumpled siding away from the runway as hard as he could. A powerful gust caught the warped metal panel and sent it spinning end over end through the air.

Senior Airman Mark Mitchell grabbed his arm. “Sir!” the radioman screamed into his ear to be heard over the north wind shrieking low across the island. He held up the handset connected to their AN/PRC-162 radio. “I’ve got contact with that Herky Bird. They’re on final right now! They want our guys off the runway, ASAP!”

Flynn snapped his head around and looked west. He spotted a faint glow low in the sky there. The HC-130J had its high-intensity landing lights on, spearing through the darkness and the curtain of blowing snow and ice. That glow was growing brighter fast. The big aircraft must be coming straight in at more than 150 knots. “Pass the word, M-Squared,” he yelled at the radioman. “Tell everyone to clear the strip! You go, too! Now!”

“Yes, sir!” Mitchell nodded frantically. Shouting into the handset to relay the order, he turned and jogged away.

Flynn swung around through a full circle and saw the rest of his men scattering off the runway. All except one. About a hundred yards away, the short, square-shouldered figure of Private First Class Cole Hynes hadn’t budged. The soldier had his head down while he stubbornly wrestled with another big piece of debris. He didn’t seem to have heard the order to get clear. And he was apparently too fixated on his task to notice that everybody else around him was bailing out.

Damn it, Flynn thought. Maybe the other man’s radio was broken. Or maybe its batteries were dead, drained by the subzero temperatures. He cupped his hands and yelled as loudly as he could. “Hynes!”

It was useless. The howling wind caught his voice and tore it to shreds.

Down at the far end of the runway, the big HC-130J appeared suddenly out of the darkness and snow. It was no more than fifty feet above the ground and descending rapidly.

Shit, Flynn realized. He was out of time. Frantically, he sprinted toward Hynes, who had his back to the oncoming Super Hercules. He didn’t waste any more breath yelling.

The aircraft touched down hard, bounced once, and then settled firmly onto the ground — thundering straight down the runway right at the two men. Plumes of pulverized snow and ice sprayed out behind its massive landing gear and whirling propellers.

At the last moment, Hynes looked up, brushing at the snow dusting his goggles with an irritated gesture. His mouth opened in surprise. “Hey, Cap—”

And Flynn, still running all out, threw himself forward — and slammed straight into the shorter enlisted man. The hard, diving tackle knocked Hynes backward off his feet, with Flynn ending up on top. Desperately, he buried his face into the icy surface of the runway… just as the left wing of the speeding Super Hercules slashed past right overhead.

For a split second, the whole universe became a hurricane-force maelstrom of shattering, deafening noise and pounding winds, snow, and razor-sharp fragments of ice. And then, blessedly, the noise and pummeling died away.

Dazed, Flynn slowly raised his head and looked behind him. The HC-130J was slowing fast as it neared the end of the runway. Painfully, he levered himself back up to his knees.

“Ow,” Hynes said, sounding aggrieved. “Geez, that fucking hurt.” His eyes focused on the man who’d just knocked him on his ass. “Uh, I mean, that fucking hurt, sir.”

“Yeah, I bet it did,” Flynn agreed with a wide grin. He climbed back to his feet and then helped the enlisted man up. He nodded toward where the big four-engine turboprop had finally come to a stop with its propellers still turning, just before it ran out of runway and risked skidding off across the icy tundra. “But maybe not as much as getting sliced into a bazillion pieces by one of those propeller blades, right?”

“No, sir,” Hynes agreed fervently. “And thanks for not letting me get killed, sir.”

“Too much paperwork involved, PFC,” Flynn said, still smiling. “Fortunately for you, I’m lazy that way.”

About an hour later, once they’d finished helping the HC-130J’s aircrew tie their big plane down and cover its engine cowlings and sensor pods against possible flying ice and hail damage, Flynn had time to welcome the two Air National Guard pilots and their staff sergeant loadmaster a little more formally. Which, since they were all exhausted and freezing, pretty much consisted of a quick handshake and nod across the aisle of the bus as it drove away from the airport.

“Skater and I sure appreciate your guys’ hard work out there, Nick,” Ingalls told him tiredly. “If we’d had to try setting down with all that FOD still littering the runway, we’d have been in a world of hurt.”

“Heck, I’ve been wanting to add my own aviation component to this half-assed command,” Flynn said. “Now it looks like I’m finally getting my wish.”

The copilot, a pretty brunette named Van Horn, choked back a laugh. “Just until the weather clears enough for JBER to fly in mechanics and spare parts to fix that dud engine of ours,” she warned.

Flynn peered out through the windshield. Even with the headlights, it was now basically impossible to see more than a couple of dozen yards, if that. The brief lull in the storm was over and they were trapped again in the heart of a blizzard howling across the treeless, little island at full force. “That could be a while,” he commented mildly.

The others nodded. “Welcome to winter in Alaska,” Ingalls agreed with resignation. “Starts in the fall and doesn’t end until sometime around summer. I figure we’re probably stuck here for at least a couple of days, maybe more.”

“Well, it’s not all that bad around here,” Flynn told them.

Van Horn looked surprised. “It’s not?”

Flynn leaned back out of the way of the punch he thought might be coming his way in a second. “Nope,” he said wryly. “It’s much worse.”

“I would kill you for that,” Laura Van Horn said with an answering smile. “But I’m too darned tired. So maybe I’ll take my revenge later, Captain Flynn.”