Hammerhead Ranch Motel

22

Major Larry “Montana” Fletcher of the 403rd Air Wing pulled up to the guard shack at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi. There was a long line of cars ahead and some type of commotion at the front. Montana stuck his head out the window to see what was going on.

One of the guards jumped back from the car at the head of the line and pulled his gun on the driver. The driver exited his vehicle with his hands up. He was decked out in nonregulation combat fatigues, flak jacket and helmet, a press pass clipped to his breast pocket. Another guard went to the passenger side of the car and removed a small cage holding a dog.

Montana laughed. He got out of the car and walked to the guard shack. He checked the name on the press pass and turned to the guard. “It’s okay, fellas. He’s with me.” The guards saluted.

“Mr. Crease, it’s a pleasure,” said Montana, extending his hand. “I’ve been expecting you. I’m a big fan. Why don’t you pull your car up to that building and I’ll be right with you.”

A half hour later, Montana and Crease shouted back and forth over the propeller noise as they walked across the tarmac to the mobile staircase waiting at their plane.

It was a magnificent silver Lockheed-Martin WC-130 Hercules. Montana ’s particular plane was nicknamed The Rapacious Reno.

“I named it after Janet Reno,” Montana shouted as loud as he could. “She’s a native of Miami, the home of the National Hurricane Center.”

Crease stopped and was shaken at the sight of the World War II-style nose art on The Rapacious Reno. Instead of a cheesecake pose, Reno had flying tiger jaws with pointy teeth dripping blood, and Crease recognized the reading glasses and smart haircut of the seventy-eighth attorney general of the United States. Behind the flying tiger head was a mural depicting Reno ’s life-courtroom scenes, childhood memories of south Florida.

“I painted it myself,” shouted Montana. “I’m a big admirer of hers-a classic Florida pioneer. She gets a lot of criticism and bum raps from people who don’t know anything about her.”

“What’s she doing in this part of the mural?” asked Crease.

“Building a log cabin.”

“Did she ever build a log cabin?”

“I dunno,” Montana said, and ran up the staircase.

The planes of the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron had an additional staff position. It was the instrument operator-technically known as the dropsonde operator-and on The Rapacious Reno that job fell to William “The Truth” Honeycutt. The dropsonde is a small metal cylinder sixteen inches long and three inches wide containing a microprocessor, a radio transmitter and a small drogue parachute. The dropsonde operator’s primary responsibility is to release the electronic tube into the eye of the hurricane to measure temperature, humidity and pressure. Through triangulated telemetry with ground stations, the device also registers wind speed and direction. Under intense pressure from the Air Force public relations office, the 53rd Squadron reluctantly conferred the position of “honorary dropsonde operator” to FCN correspondent Blaine Crease.

Honeycutt was supposed to coach and supervise Crease. Instead, Crease made Honeycutt carry his TV camera and follow him around the plane to film him performing important-looking tasks. Crease was beside himself with joy; his only regret was that he had to carry Toto everywhere in a kangaroo-style nylon pouch on his stomach. Crease sat in the copilot’s seat and at the navigator’s table, the reconnaissance post and the weather console. Honeycutt had to keep filming and refilming Crease because crew members constantly leaped into the picture to grab Crease’s arms before he threw levers and switches he knew nothing about.

“He’s gonna make us crash! We’re all gonna die!” screamed Milton “Bananas” Foster.

“Get that limp-dick the fuck out of here!” yelled Lee “Southpaw” Barnes.

Pepe Miguelito sat in the corner weeping as he listened to “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” on his personal radio.

“Now, now. Everyone settle down. Everything will be all right,” Montana said in a steady, calming voice. “Honeycutt…Honeycutt?…”

Honeycutt stopped shadowboxing in the back of the cockpit. “What is it, sir?”

“Honeycutt, why don’t you take Mr. Crease back in the hold and teach him about the dropsonde?”

“Yes, sir,” said Honeycutt.

At zero nine hundred hours Zulu, the Hercules entered the Tropic of Cancer. At nine hundred thirty, the crew crossed the twenty-second parallel three hundred miles west of Havana. The plane was buffeted as the WC-130 entered the edge of the cyclonic system. More than three weeks after forming near the Cape Verde Islands, the hurricane was tracking across the Caribbean Sea, threatening the Gulf of Mexico.

“We’re all gonna die!” yelled Foster.

Marilyn Sebastian grabbed him by the collar and shook him violently. “Get a grip on yourself! Be a man!” She slapped him. She was about to kiss him when Honeycutt grabbed her. “This is for Baton Rouge,” he said and took her in his strong arms and their mouths met. Montana coolly banked left, into the clockwise rotation of the hurricane, to minimize the crosswinds. He edged his way back right, flying closer and closer to the eye of the storm.

“Look!” said Baxter, pointing out of the cockpit. There was a sudden break in the clouds. “Check that eye wall. What incredible stadium effect. This one has to be at least a three on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.”

“It’s a four,” said Montana. “Hold on. I’m going to take it through and come back for another pass. The plane punched into the eye wall on the other side.

Back in the cavernous cargo hold, Crease listened to the entire lecture Honeycutt gave about the dropsonde and paid absolutely no attention.

“Yeah, yeah, okay, okay,” Crease said impatiently. “So where is the little tube? Where’s the door I throw it out?”

“I just told you,” said Honeycutt. “It’s dropped by hydraulics from an automatic external hatch. You never see the thing. All you do is press a button.”

“That’s not good television,” said Crease. “You mean there’s no bomb bay that opens up dramatically above the terrible eye of the hurricane?”

“Nope.”

“Can you at least open some kind of window so my hair will blow?”

“What?”

“Never mind. Listen, do you have any kind of door or something that opens up in the floor here?”

“We have a small, auxiliary instrumentation hatch…”

“Great! That’s wonderful! Let’s call it the bomb bay,” said Crease.

“But it’s not-”

“I know television!” said Crease. “Now say it!”

“It’s the bomb bay,” Honeycutt said sarcastically.

“Good! Now here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re going to go get the little drop-thingie and open the bomb bay, and then you’re going to film me as I bravely walk to the opening-wind swirling up from the horrible storm-and release the doodad through the hole in the floor. What d’ya say?”

“No way.”

Crease marched up to the cockpit and spoke urgently with Montana, who called back to Honeycutt over the intercom headsets. He explained that while Crease’s request might seem unorthodox, in the larger scheme of things it was what headquarters wanted to improve the image of the air base. And it kept Crease out of his cockpit.

Honeycutt went back into the bowels of the plane, opened a panel and retrieved the dropsonde. The thunder of the engines and the storm roared all around. He handed the silver baton to Crease.

Honeycutt got down on the deck and opened the instrumentation hatch, and both men were chilled by the rush of air.

“Now remember,” Honeycutt shouted above the wind, “don’t release the dropsonde until I tell you we’re over the eye.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Crease shouted back. “You just make sure you get all this on tape!”

Honeycutt hoisted the video camera onto his shoulder and prompted Crease: “Readyyyyyyy, readyyyyyyy…three, two, one…now!”

Crease tossed the dropsonde underhand toward the open hatch. Flying up in the air, end over end, the twirling instrument looked like a nice shiny stick, and Toto leaped out of his pouch, took two steps and jumped. Toto caught the dropsonde in his mouth at the top of the baton’s arc.

Crease’s eyes bulged as Toto and the dropsonde hung suspended in the air for a split second, and then both fell through the hatch and disappeared into the hurricane.

“Ahhhhhhhhh!” Crease yelled in terror. He spun and lunged for the video camera on Honeycutt’s shoulder.

“What are you doing?!” said Honeycutt.

Crease didn’t answer; he pressed the eject button, grabbed the tape and gave it a quick push-throw toward the open “bomb bay” doors like a two-handed shot put. He pulled his hands back fast as if it had been a hot potato.

“Good. Nobody ever needs to see that footage.”

He looked back at his cameraman. “I’ll do my best to get you off the hook, Honeycutt, but it’s going to be difficult explaining how you could have let such a brainless thing happen.”

Honeycutt knocked him cold.