Operation Skytrain

Lt. Commander Brigid Colding faced the ocean from the lee of the hanger, waiting for the sun to rise over it, knowing it never would. A charcoal wall of clouds confronted her as it had the entire east coast of the state for the past five weeks, low, looming and ominous, yet unmoving. A sheet of rain curtained off the sea several miles offshore. Hurricane Alpha.

Sparse traffic darted along the coastal highway, most of it official. While many residents remained, few ventured out unless absolutely necessary. Under a hurricane watch for over a month, with two mandatory evacuations set and called off, even the diehard remainers had settled into a siege mentality. Once a week like clockwork, they checked their shutters and topped off their supplies. Batteries, water, food, fuel, the nation’s production had only recently been able to overcome the shortages from stockpiling along five hundred miles of the eastern seaboard, despite both state and federal admonishments against hoarding and now official rationing.

The Air Force base sat eerily empty, almost abandoned. The regular airwings and most personnel had evacuated to the points north and west weeks ago. Even the C-130s her plane ran recon for had retreated across the peninsula to a base situated beside one of the three major ports in the state. Miami was all but closed to civilian cargo traffic. Interservice rivalry had ruled out the Naval Air Station near Mayport. NOAA had transferred operations here temporarily to cut back on their flying time, and to facilitate coordination with the Air Force Hurricane Hunters even if they weren’t a unified command. Not yet, anyway.

The two Orions in NOAA’s squadron had been the last to arrive, bringing the total number of planes up to twelve. Normally, her crew was based half an hour west. That they’d been transferred to collocate with the Air Force said that militarization would not be far behind. The corresponding State of Emergency had been in place for weeks. All it took was the stroke of a Presidential pen, one that was rumored to be forthcoming any day. And that was the least disturbing rumor she’d heard in O-Club since she’d been on base.

Colding suspected more than a few of those rumors were true, at least from the informal inquiries she’d received. For weeks, the Administration’s proxies had been quietly pushing a debunked sixty-year-old Plowshare plan on social media. She hadn’t taken them seriously until senior Air Force officers started asking her probing questions in security briefings that she couldn’t answer. But with a little internet research, she put pieces together. The crew did not yet know nor would they unless the plan was put into effect. If that happened, a lot of people would die. She wanted no part of it.

Not that the O-Club would last much longer either. A tattered gale advisory pennant whipped on the flagpole anchored next to its long-abandoned lifeguard platform. The wind whistled out of the northeast, drifting sand across the highway and driving the relentless longshore surf that had begun to undermine both the road and the building’s foundation. The older sergeants whispered that the club was cursed. Sixteen years ago, a fire had burned it nearly to the ground. Now, Alpha threatened to reclaim it along with half the barrier island for its mistress, the Atlantic. The port, just ten miles up the road, ran dredges weekly just to keep critical supply convoys moving south after they’d repurposed the cruise ship terminal for cargo to partially compensate for the loss of Miami. They dumped the spoil off the south jetty hoping it would run down the coast. It barely made a difference.

Between the shore and the slowly advancing rain curtain, Colding watched a cutter begin its long crawl south from the port to take up station for patrolling off West Palm. A Dunkirk armada of civilian boats held anchor in the Intercoastal, ready to deliver aid and evacuate survivors if Alpha ever moved. The Coast Guard plucked at least one impetuous captain and crew from the 30-foot seas at the outer buoys each day.

“Alves is ready to pull onto the tarmac,” Lt. Friedel almost shouted in her ear. Her navigator’s entrance had been masked by the relentless wind.

Colding stepped back into the wind-shadow of the recess by the door where they both could hear.

“Who’d we draw today?” she asked, not moving to return inside.

“Strand and Zuma,” he replied.

Colding managed to contain a grimace. Strand was a Texas-sized lozenge that always seemed to lodge sideways in her throat, one she just couldn’t seem to swallow. With him, everything was bigger and better, including his opinions, especially of himself. He was an academy grad who’d washed out as a pilot so felt he had something to prove. He was more interested in ideology than meteorology, a combat supply specialist with experience in hot drop zones overseas. Security over science was the official Administration watchword he personified. He had only minimal qualifications as a flight meteorologist. Zuma was amiable enough, at least when she wasn’t around Strand, and more than competent. That command had stripped Colding of her own meteorologists in the name of interagency cooperation was yet another indication that change was on the wind.

“How’s the crew holding up?” Colding had spoken to them only briefly since the transfer. Most of her time had been consumed in mission updates and mandatory briefings about how to integrate into life on the empty airbase.

“Honestly, they’re wondering about our situation.” No rank, no ma’am, no sir, just their normal informal conversation when no one official was around. Their new Air Force hosts had more formal expectations. “Any word on our status?”

“Nothing new,” she said, wishing she had something concrete. “Remind them that they can submit their resignation paperwork to the Director conditionally. Anybody with their time in will get an early out. She’s got a VERA in her pocket from the cutbacks last year. She says she’ll waive the advanced notice requirement and sign off on everything on her desk as soon as she gets a heads-up the transfer is coming. That should prevent DoD from stop-lossing anyone. If it never happens, she’ll hold everything in a drawer unopened and burn it if anyone changes their mind. No judgement.”

“What about you?” Friedel eyed her intently. “Sent yours up?”

Colding turned away to watch the cutter battling the waves. They were ten feet lower near shore than out by the buoys, yet still dangerous enough. If other rumors were to be believed, the State of Emergency would formally transform the Coast Guard’s mission from search and rescue to interdiction. Not that any foreign evacuees had yet set foot on American soil.

Colding turned back to face her navigator. “I didn’t sign up to join the Air Force,’ she stated bluntly. “Feel free to discretely tell the crew I’ve put a contingency in place. If they are concerned about saluting the likes of Strand, they should, too. But it’s a personal decision. No judgement here, either.”

Friedel nodded, then headed back inside. Colding didn’t follow.

She’d give him time to spread the word. If anyone was holding their papers in reserve, they still had time to drop them in interagency mail. They would land with the Director tonight. She hated the thought of leaving anyone in a lurch, but equally hated the perversion of a job she loved.

Once again, she faced the storm, trying to fathom what might come next. Up to now, the scientists had kept the worst ideas at bay. Recently, they’d been sidelined or intimidated into silence. Desperate and unstable voices within the Administration increasingly held sway. But if someone actually implemented one of the debunked plans from the 50s, blame would flow downhill like a dam burst of untreated sewage until it slammed into everyone who couldn’t dodge out of the way. No one further up the chain than the Director had their backs. And serving at the pleasure of the President meant that she likely couldn’t continue to when push came to shove.

The problem was that none of the scientists understood how Alpha had maintained the newly established Cat 6 intensity for five weeks without moving. The energy within the ocean should have been long exhausted. Replenishment through the Florida Current was the only working theory they had. Sea surface temperatures in the Gulf and Western Caribbean were both at record highs. Alpha had sucked up all the moisture and cloud cover for hundreds of miles around. All they knew for certain was that anyone surviving on the islands desperately needed help.

When Operation Skytrain had ramped up, the Air Force brass had slated four sorties a day, which the 53^rd’s ten Hercules alone couldn’t cover. Even with NOAA’s extra two Orions, that schedule had pressed their functional limits between mandatory rest and maintenance. With at best a three-day rotation, the extra roundtrip of flight time from Biloxi or even Lakeland had become critical, not for range, but for time on station. Not for the cargo planes, for the Hunters who guided them in.

Colding’s job was recon, finding weak spots in the wind fields the C-130s could slip through. Their best opportunities came during eyewall replacement when the worst winds temporarily broke down. At least that portion of the science hadn’t collapsed. But with four daily runs needed to keep the islands minimally fed, they didn’t have the luxury of waiting. So, the Hunters found seams for the cargo giants to drop supplies onto whatever islands were within the dead-eye calm. Alpha’s center wobbled slightly, expanding and contracting, though the storm’s position didn’t officially move. In five weeks, they hadn’t lost a plane, a Hercules or an Orion. Not that they hadn’t come close.

Colding glanced at her watch. Time to go to work.

The metal door almost got away from her as she retreated back inside. She struggled to close it against a sudden gust of wind. The hanger door stood open, waiting for her plane to emerge from its metal cocoon and take flight. Lt. Garcia, her flight engineer, waited at the nose of the plane. Together, they circled the WP-3 slowly, doing a visual inspection. They found no anomalies.

As they approached the ladder to the midline door, Colding heard raised voices from inside. She entered to find her copilot, Lt. Alves, in a confrontation with Captain Strand, barring his way to his duty station in back. It was still strange to see anyone on her plane in an Air Force green instead of NOAA blue. Even their rank structure contrasted, Army versus Navy. She continually had to stop herself from calling Strand “Lieutenant”.

“What seems to be the problem here, gentlemen?” Colding asked in her best command voice as she stepped inside to clear the way for Garcia.

“Strand seems to think this is a combat mission,” Alves replied. Working his ever-present chewing gum, he pointed the pistol holstered on the belt of Strand’s two-piece flight suit, its grip tucked just beneath his flight jacket.

“You will not wear that on my plane, Strand,” Colding ordered.

“With all due respect, Commander, we’re flying over unknown, potentially hostile territory,” Strand drawled in what she found to be an insufferable Texas twang. “New regs allow it.”

“Air Force regs, maybe,” Colding countered, though she doubted even that was true. “But this isn’t an Air Force plane, at least not yet. And if I have to repeat myself, Captain, I’ll see you grounded with that gun.”

Reluctantly, Strand unhitched the holster, wrapping it in his web belt. He brushed past her toward the door. Colding scanned the remaining crew. It was eerie to see ten of the twelve meteorologist stations empty. But their mission was reconnaissance not research. Fewer personnel meant fewer lives at risk.

“Where’s Zuma?” Colding demanded. If she grounded Strand, she couldn’t afford to lose her only other flight meteorologist. Calling up a replacement would take time. Though technically her flight director could fill in. Redmond was top-notch.

“Entering the hanger now,” Garcia answered from the doorway.

Colding nodded, closing the subject in her mind. “Prepare for rollout. We’re wheels up in fifteen.”

She turned toward the cockpit. By the time she and Alves had performed their preliminary checks, her flight director reported the door was closed and locked with all crew aboard and accounted for. Final gear strapdown was complete.

Colding signaled the groundcrew they were ready. The ramp-rats connected the tow tractor and pulled the plane out onto the rain-slick tarmac. They were the only one on the ramp, wind and weather keeping the few other remaining planes on the base under cover. The hanger door rolled shut behind them.

Soon she and Alves were consumed in executing, coordinating and crosschecking the preflight checklist with the rest of the crew. All systems green, she radioed the tower for clearance. When she received a hold short, she taxied down to the holding apron of Runway 30, nearly two miles away.

While she awaited clearance for takeoff, Colding tuned in for a final weather report. The wind was strong and steady from the northeast at twenty-five knots, gusting to thirty-seven. Rain lashed down with worse on the way from the approaching squall line. If they didn’t beat it out, there would be a half-hour ground-stop. As it was, they’d have to bank and climb directly after takeoff to avoid the worst of it.

Another day in the Commissioned Corps. In the past five weeks, she’d seen worse.

“November-4-3-Romeo-Foxtrot,” Colding heard in her headset, “you are cleared for takeoff. Good hunting. Keep our airmen safe.”

“NOAA-4-3 copy,” she responded with her informal squawk out of habit. “Don’t worry, tower, we’ll bring ‘em all home.”

She pulled onto the head of the nine-thousand-foot runway. Fully fueled and loaded, she’d need almost half of it to get into the air. She and Alves performed their final checks. By the time she set the flaps and released the parking brake, she couldn’t see the far end of the runway for the rain.

“Hang on, people, this could get a little rough” she announced to the crew over the intercom. She couldn’t help but tweak Strand and Zuma. “Our guests might want to keep their airsick bags handy.”

She throttled up the Orion’s four turbo-props. They began to roll. Rain sheeted against the windshield. As they picked up speed, she felt every knot of the fifteen-degree crosswind.

Halfway through her minimum takeoff distance, something began to feel off. The ride felt too smooth, the sounds too muted, as if they were already in the air. Alves identified the problem first.

“Commander, we’re hydroplaning,” he informed her.

Shit, he was right. They were slewing sideways along the strip. One good gust and they’d lateral off the runway at speed. If she aborted, there was no guarantee she’d regain control. Any sudden course change could spin them sideways. Her only option was to get air beneath her.

“Rotating,” Colding announced calmly. “Hang on.”

She gunned the engines and pulled back the yoke. The airframe bucked from the added power. The wheels bounced once, twice then settled again. The side of the runway slid closer. It was up or off. Come on, Missy, she coaxed her plane silently. Catch some damned air.

Reluctantly, the Orion crept off the runway. Colding could almost feel individual blades of grass tickling the port wing wheel before she corrected her heading and gained altitude. Only when they had climbed a few hundred feet with ocean beneath them did she slowly let out the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.

Alves blew out a more audible sigh before he started chewing his gum again. He smiled over at her broadly. “Nice flying, Yeti.”

He used her callsign, the one she’d been anointed with soon after she’d first shown up on base. She wanted to take it as play on her name and her calm, professional demeanor, but she suspected it had something to do with shooting down more than one amorous advance, including Strand’s. Female pilots still had more to prove.

“Let’s hope that’s the last of our bad luck for this mission,” Colding replied.

As she turned away from the feeder band before them and rose to cruising altitude, she had Alves check on everyone in back. No problems reported, no airsick bags required.

Colding informed Redmond they’d be on station in half an hour. Their C-130 flight wing had taken up a holding pattern over Avon Park, waiting for the Hunter to guide them in. First, her crew would need to identify an acceptable flight corridor. That meant slowing to 200 knots at about ten thousand feet and flying a butterfly pattern through Alpha’s eyewall while Strand and Zuma mapped it out under Redmond’s direction. Which would put them through the thickest part of the wall about a third the way up. With sustained surface winds at 185mph, it would be another nasty flight at best.

There was no training for this kind of flying. It was all OJT.

Hopefully they could map out a wind seam so the Air Force could deliver supplies. The C-130s could take a lot of beating. They were the Air Force Hurricane Hunter alternative to NOAA’s WP-3s. But airdrops had fairly particular requirements in course, altitude and speed. They were compressing those limits already. But without any replenishment of supplies, it was doubtful anyone on the islands could survive.

Operation Skytrain had been an internal Administration compromise. The internecine infighting between FEMA, USAID and the Air Force for control had been brutal. Homeland Security, State and DoD all wanted to stake a claim to the credit but to deflect all the blame if the mission slipped sideways.

With heavy seas offshore, airdrop had been the only viable resupply option. That fit the Air Force’s continual push for standalone air operations. Their Chief of Staff had convinced the Administration to approach it as a training exercise, against the Secretary of the Air Force’s advice. The loss of the Space Corps functionality still stung the upper brass. The PR didn’t hurt. But operation and maintenance costs were adding up with little sign they were doing any good. Morale had begun to fray.

The authorization of aid to the islands hadn’t diminished the Administration’s fixation on containment. Parachuting in aid Berlin Airlift style served to justify their continuing interdiction of “undesirables” from the country’s shores. Refugees had been transferred to the lower islands, or had disappeared behind tall cyclone fencing in southeast Cuba. They were all gang members, drug runners and rapists anyway if the official press releases were to be believed.

On the islands, reserves of batteries, power and gasoline had been long ago exhausted. One by one, day by day, week by week, intermittent signals had gone silent. Low sunspot activity now limited shortwave traffic to line-of-sight. Rain, clouds and constant lightning attenuated and interfered with most other frequencies. A perfect storm. With no way to get word out, there was little measure of Skytrain’s success or failure.

Five weeks later, the American public had grown restive. They wanted the resources redirected to Miami, West Palm, and Lauderdale, any of which might be next. The rain down there was measured in feet, not inches. King tides had reclaimed vast tracts of shoreline, lowlands and barrier islands. The coast was littered with inundation zones and fresh breaches. AIA had become more of a concept than a functional road. Long sections of U.S. 1 required Humvee snorkels to traverse.

With no sign of a reprieve or an exit strategy, and relentless pressure from the conservative media, the Administration’s patience was wearing thin. The Air Force Chief of Staff had been relieved a week ago. He had been the last compassionately conservative adult in the Presidential briefing room. Homeland First voices had begun to reemerge, and with them, long discredited plans to dissipate the storm.

Quietly, various agencies had begun repositioning satellites away from the area in preparation, limiting the information emerging even further, likely by design. American airwaves were now flooded of self-serving propaganda that no one on the islands could have survived. Continued operations were counted in days. Hers could be the final flight. The militarization of NOAA would be the Rubicon leading to a brave new phase of operations, one refocused on dispersal rather than relief.

There was an insidious calculus behind those Homeland First voices. As Katrina and Maria had clearly demonstrated, black and brown faces mattered less to them. Garcia and Alves knew that from experience. Zuma probably did as well, though she didn’t show it.

The Orion bounced around in the outer reaches of Alpha. The storm didn’t want to make this mission easy. No storm ever did.

Something flickered in Colding’s peripheral vision. She glanced down at her instruments just in time to see her turbulence radar come back online.

“Did you see that, Alves?” she asked her copilot. “My radar display went dark for a second.”

“Yup,” he confirmed, “Mine, too.”

So, it wasn’t a cockpit issue. It had to be the feed.

“Garcia…” Colding started.

“On it,” the Flight Engineer replied. Behind her, Colding could hear her issuing instructions to her engineering and electronics specialists. 

Both cockpit displays continued to stutter. If they fully lost the radar feed, they would be forced to turn back, which would scrub the flight wing over Avon. It was unlikely a replacement plane could be scrambled before their time on station ran down.

“Let’s try to get above as much of this as possible,” Colding said. Alves acknowledged.

She climbed toward the plane’s ceiling. She couldn’t get over the eyewall itself but she could get above the rest of the cloud cover. Alves informed Friedel of their new altitude, speed and course. In the compartment behind Colding, Friedel and Redmond began to consult on adjustments to the mission profile. Redmond relayed the new parameters to Strand and Zuma so they could coordinate. It was a small plane. Everyone was in the loop.

Colding delayed reporting back to air traffic control until she had a better outline of the problem. ATC would want to scrub the mission. Colding had dealt with glitches like this before. WP-3s were old planes that had taken a lot of beating recently despite the ground crew’s best efforts to keep them fit. Like an aging athlete or boyfriend, they needed a little massaging now and then to stay in the game. She had confidence Garcia and her crew would straighten out the issue before they had to abort.

A minute later, Garcia broke in by intercom. “We need to swap out a cable on the radar feed, Commander. It should only take a couple seconds. We await your go-ahead to proceed.”

“Colding copy. Proceed.”

Both of the turbulence radar screens in the cockpit again went dark. A moment later, both sprang back to life in a mottled pattern of orange, yellow and green. They could see again.

“Commander,” Redmond said over the intercom, “I have a request to update to our mission plan.”

“Go ahead,” Colding responded.

“Strand requests we make our first run at altitude. Since we’re already up here, I see no reason to object.”

That was Redmond’s way of passing the buck up the chain of command. Strand, like all the new Air Force regime, favored higher altitude drops. They were somewhat safer for the aircrews but the dispersal pattern meant fewer supplies would land within the intended zones. Simulations and observation from the cargo planes themselves indicated that up to seventy-five percent of supplies were lost in high altitude drops, which struck the planners as excessive. But with no groundside confirmation of whether sufficient supplies were actually getting through, that argument had worn thin. As the heated exchange in this morning’s briefing had confirmed.

But Colding thought a high-altitude recon was more likely a trial run. Based on the questions she’d been asked unofficially, she suspected the next stage birds could fly right over the eyewall and would need no guidance in. Their target was large enough that they literally couldn’t miss. But while they wouldn’t need guidance, they would still need data on the wind fields before deploying. She suspected the Air Force’s real objective in militarizing NOAA was to limit disclosure of the science and that data before, during and after the operation. A signature on an interim security clearance would silence a lot of sins. The ultimate NDA she refused to sign.

Even so, Colding could think of no reason to decline the request without it appearing as straightforward bias. Which Redmond knew as well. He was just hoping she might come up with something he’d missed.

She couldn’t.

“Friedel,” she ordered her navigator, “update our initial butterfly to accommodate the Flight Director. Keep our subsequent passes according to flight plan. Inform ATC of the change.”

That was as much of the baby as she could split.

By now, they had risen above all the clouds except the high cirrus shield of the storm. They no longer needed the wipers to clear the windshield. They dodged around dark cumulonimbus anvils sprinkled through the feeder bands. Lightning danced erratically below. Ahead, the inky eyewall loomed, veined with more strobing blue-white bolts.

“Strap in, people,” Colding said. “It’s going to get bumpy.”

The wall of darkness drew closer. The high clouds condensed and curdled, blotting out the sun. In a series of seconds, the windshield went from clear air to mist to sheeting rain. Turbulence jolted the plane through three degrees of freedom, pitch, roll and yaw, as well as every conceivable combination of displacement along each axis, vertical, horizontal and 3D diagonal. Pelletized precipitation began bouncing off the windshield. Rime ice spiderwebbed in from its metallic edges.

And this is along a crease in the wind-field, Colding thought.

With terse efficiency, her crew began to do their jobs.

Mere moments into mapping, Colding’s controls began to feel sluggish. She fought to maintain their course after each bounce and slew, and return to their flight plan. Their airspeed slowed, requiring more throttle to compensate.

Alves noticed her adjustments and craned his head to look through the side windshield. “I’m seeing signs of icing,” he notified her. “That might account for the increased drag.”

Colding nodded without turning away from the forward view and her instruments. She interrupted the coordination over the intercom. “Friedel, Redmond, give me a visual assessment of the wings.”

Her navigator was first to call out a report. “I’m seeing significant ice buildup on the control surfaces of the starboard wing.”

Redmond echoed that to port, adding, “Positive confirmation of ice crystals on the number two engine intakes.”

That tore it. The adjusted flight plan was too high. They either had to shed altitude or risk dropping from the sky. The upper air layers of Alpha were just too cold.

“Descending to previous flight plan altitude,” Colding informed the crew as she pushed the yoke forward into a rapid but controlled descent.

“Can’t you press through it?” Strand questioned her unprofessionally. “My display indicates there may be an upcoming break in the wind fields. The C-130s won’t have a problem with this.”

“Negative, Captain,” she responded flatly. “This crew’s safety is my primary concern. We’re returning to our flight path from the briefing. The birds behind us won’t know the difference. Friedel, update our flight plan. Redmond, coordinate with ATC and our guests.”

The intercom chattered back to life. Colding detected more than a note of professional disapproval in Strand’s acknowledgements. Which was likely one reason he was not a pilot.

Before they achieved their new cruising altitude, they hit a sudden downdraft. The bottom fell out. They plummeted several thousand feet in a matter of seconds. Colding heard a crashing sound somewhere behind her. She hoped it was just equipment breaking loose, not unsecured personnel.

“Everyone ok back there?” Alves inquired over the intercom. “Report by station.”

Even as affirmatives came rolling in, an eye-piercing flash-boom across the entire windscreen whited out Colding’s vision and left her ears ringing. Her forward radar screen went dark again. She glanced over at Alves’s station and found it dead as well.

She interrupted the rollcall. “Garcia, our radar glitch is back. I need you on it, ASAP. We’re flying blind up here.”

“Flight engineer, copy,” was her only reply.

The intercom erupted in new coordination between Garcia and her specialists. Eternal minutes later, Colding’s display flickered back to life.

“Oh, crap,” Alves interjected, staring at his screen. “Where did that come from?”

“I see it,” Colding responded, her eyes moving methodically between her instruments and the rain-shrouded forward view. The radar display indicated a wall of wind in front of them rising vertically.

She issued a warning over the intercom. “Buckle up, everyone. We’re headed into a roll-vortex. There’s no way around or over it. Our only path is through. This will not be pleasant.”

Colding angled the plane to face the vortex nose on to avoid getting slewed or rolled when the tornadic winds hit. She climbed as steeply as she dared, but there was no way to clear it in time. With any luck, she could use the updraft to slingshot over it, straight into the storm’s eye.

When the plane slammed into the vortex, the wings vibrated uncontrollably. It took all of her and Alves’s combined effort to keep the plane from entering a spin. Something on the exterior audibly snapped.

“Commander, we’ve lost contact with ATC,” Garcia informed her. “Radio is offline. Attempting repairs. Lack of signal strength indicates possible antenna damage.”

A moment later, that was the least of their problems. Rain mixed with the seawater the roll-vortex had dredged up from the ocean. The forward view entered whiteout conditions. Colding and Alves flew by instruments alone. Salt rime encrusted at the edges of the windshield where the water ice had receded.

Within moments the plane began to buck and stutter. The background noise of the engines changed tempo from a consistent yet comforting whine to the chatter of a poorly-tuned car engine. They shed altitude as the decreasing updraft no longer overcame the effect of gravity on the multi-ton airframe.

“Garcia,” Colding called back over the intercom, “we’re losing power.”

“The mixture’s all wrong,” her flight engineer replied. “Number two, number three, and number four engines are running too rich. I tried overriding the choke. No effect. The intakes might be clogged. I can cut back fuel to get the mixture right but we’ll lose even more power.”

“Do what you have to,” Colding responded. “Just keep these engines lit. I need everything you can give me when we hit the downdraft on the other side.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Garcia said, sounding haggard. “No promises.”

Colding knew that meant it was bad. She felt the drag increase as the winds shifted from beneath to behind them. The engines developed a full stammer. Each of the four blanked off and on before firing back to life. The wind’s buffeting increased.

“Alves, coordinate with Strand and Zuma,” Colding instructed her copilot with a calmness she didn’t feel. “See if you can find a way through this. We need a seam to flush the intakes with rainwater. Friedel, Redmond, search for a contingency landing strip within the eye.”

The plane lurched as she lost a quarter of her remaining power. What little lift they had went missing.

“Number two engine offline,” Garcia informed her. “Attempting restart... No joy.”

“Keep trying,” Colding ordered, knowing it was redundant. She adjusted the plane’s trim to compensate for the missing engine. In ideal conditions, they could stay aloft with just one. Their current situation was far from that.

The plane rocked again as they suffered another drop in power, this time by a third.

“Number three engine offline,” Garcia stated flatly. “Attempting restart… No joy.”

Now they began a steady yet controlled descent, a combination of loss of power and the roll-vortex turning downward. They hadn’t climbed nearly far enough. The salt rime continued its creeping incrustation from the edges of the windshield. Colding angled the plane to attack the wind and create as much lift as possible. Their decent barely slowed. At this rate they’d emerge just a few hundred feet off the deck. That didn’t leave much margin.

That changed when Colding’s stomach climbed into her throat. This time their power dropped by half. If it happened again, all she’d have was glide.

“Number four engine offline,” Garcia intoned before continuing her mantra. “Attempting restart… No joy.”

Please, please, please, just let us keep the last one, Colding thought.

The number one engine sputtered and coughed, seemingly oblivious to her prayers. Their descent continued precipitously. Colding glanced at her altimeter. Unless they emerged from the vortex soon, they’d either find themselves skimming the waves or clipping them if they were higher than thirty feet.

“Strand, Zuma, where are we?” she asked as levelly as she could.

Zuma broke into the intercom. “Commander, forward radar indicates a potential crease fifteen degrees starboard.”

Colding didn’t even glance at her radar or request confirmation from Alves. She banked the aircraft as much as she dared, shedding even more altitude she couldn’t really afford. But if they didn’t emerge quickly, their scant margin would no longer matter.

The number one engine blanked into silence then spontaneously jump-started back to life.

Come on, Piggy. Stay up just a couple minutes more.

And just like that, their descent ceased. The sudden press beneath Colding's seat felt as if they’d bobbed up like a cork, even though her instruments told her they were barely maintaining altitude. They immediately leveled off.

The un-encrusted circle of the windshield cleared from sheeting rain to a halo of stark blue sky. Along the entire horizon, another black wall of clouds loomed before them, as if they’d somehow emerged like a drone skimming the flooded field of Raymond James stadium. Spray from the wavetops not twenty feet below brushed against the wings.

Colding tried to get as much lift as she could from their lone rattling engine. As if to register a dissent, it idled for a cycle at a time. Slowly, excruciatingly they rose beyond the reach of the spray.

“Friedel, Redmond, tell me you have something,” she called into her mike.

“Nothing yet, commander,” her navigator answered. “We’re still syncing up exactly where we are. No IATAs within our forward cone.”

“Ok, people, man your windows” Colding called out to the entire crew. “Visual flight rules from this point forward. I’ll get us as much altitude as I can. If you see anywhere viable for landing, sing out. Even a straight shot of highway will do if it’s clear. I’d rather not put us into the water. It’s a long swim home.”

Garcia broke back in. “Number one engine is running too rich, commander. Leaning the mixture.”

“Is that absolutely necessarily?” Colding asked, though she already knew the answer. Garcia was working a minor miracle just to keep them in the air. But any less power and they’d only be able to maintain their current altitude.

“It’s that or risk stalling. Without an intake flush, I’m not sure how long I can keep it running.”

“Do what you have to, Garcia,” Colding responded. “Just keep us aloft.”

“Attempting restart on the other three engines in regular rotation. No go, not even a tickle. Don’t count on them until we set down.”

Alves interjected to the rest of the crew. “You heard our Flight Engineer, everyone. Let’s help her out. Eyes sharp. Find us a temporary home.”

Then to Colding directly, covering his mike with a hand, he said, “You ok? You look like you could use a break.”

Colding smiled wanly. She very much could. But if they had to ditch, she wanted it on her record, not his. Not that they’d likely survive long enough to file a report. “Thanks, I’m good. Just double-check me on the instruments.”

They circled within the storm’s eye searching for any strip of sanctuary where they might land, regroup and, with any luck, return to the air. Former islets that now were mere shoals zipped beneath them, showing up as muddied aqua against a deeper, turbid grey-green-blue. Reefs of roofless cinderblock disrupted the surf just offshore of the larger islands. Colding spotted several bright yellow parachutes submerged in the inundation zone. Debris and detritus littered the roads and spaces between half-covered buildings that looked more like medieval ruins than a contemporary civilization. She wondered if Strand and his kind were right, that no one on the islands could have survived.

Then movement caught her eye. From behind empty eye socket windows half covered by shattered plywood, from beneath the remains of roofs stripped bare of tiles and shingles, from between the fissures in partially collapsed cinderblock, dark faces cautiously peered up, following the sound of her lone stuttering engine against the high whine of distant winds. Men and women, young to old, some sheltering toddlers and children, others supporting grey-haired pensioners. All shaded their eyes with a hand, tracking the plane across the sky. Probably thinking she was the first of their long-awaited rescue, when in fact she and her crew would be lucky not to share their fate.

But she spotted no waving hands, no celebrations, just stone-cold, hollow eyes bordering on exhaustion, emaciated with hunger and disbelief. Most receded back into the shadowed spaces quickly. One man, beyond shock or awe, shook a fist at them, in anger or defiance she couldn’t say.

“Not much of a welcoming committee,” Alves observed.

She nodded ruefully. “At least we can confirm they’re alive.”

A silence stretched between them, neither wanting to share or acknowledge their private thought: For how long?

“Commander, I think we’ve got something,” Friedel interrupted over the intercom. “Four o’clock, on the high ground on the far end of that medium island. Might be private airstrip. Not on the charts, anyway. Can’t quite tell, but it looks clear.”

Colding circled back for a closer inspection. At first, she didn’t see it. Then she spotted the flat, straight, unnatural cut flanked by trees and brush, all surreally green instead of expected dun and grey.

“Is that sand?” she asked no one in particular. She couldn’t set down on dirt. Even packed, the Orion’s wheels would punch right through. They had better odds of surviving with a water landing, though that would be mission terminal.

“Looks like just some blow in,” Redmond said. “I see asphalt.”

“Concur,” Alves said. “Sand around the edges but the center looks solid.”

Colding didn’t have time for another pass, not while trying to keep the plane in the air. She’d have to rely on everyone else’s eyes, as much as that violated every rule of piloting. “What else do you see, Alves?”

“It’s short,” he said, peering intently out the side window. “I don’t see any debris. We can set her down but getting her back up might be a trick.”

The number one engine stuttered and blanked one more time before coughing back to life.

“Ok,” Colding said, “unless anyone sees a better option, we’ll set down here. We’ll figure out takeoff after landing.”

Even that depended on having more than one engine. Two was the minimum for takeoff under ideal conditions. On a short strip, all four was their only realistic option.

“Someone give me a wind report. Are we better off landing one way or another?” Hopefully there wasn’t a crosswind. There was no tower, no windsock. The trees, eerily leaved out in bright green spring foliage, weren’t enough to get a visual read. Ripples through the dune grass along the island’s shore seemed to swirl first in one direction then another.

Strand answered, “Winds are light and variable, consistent with interior eye conditions. Should be clear either way.”

“Good enough,” Colding said. She lined up with the runway by the shortest route possible. She stole another glance down on the way by. At one end of the island, she spotted a large house with numerous outbuildings, all worse for wear, and the pilings of a dock. Alves wasn’t kidding the inland field was short. Close to their minimum. She’d have to touchdown almost where the warning track should be just to make sure they didn’t overshoot.

She and Alves ran their normal checklist, abbreviated by the absence of air traffic control. She had no idea how bush pilots, smugglers and drug runners did this on a daily basis. This was well outside her comfort zone for all her other skills. But necessity was a mother, or so her own mother used to say.

Colding lined up the plane with the cut and came in as low to the trees and scrub as she dared. As much as it went against all her instincts, she dropped the moment she confirmed pavement beneath her. As the last few feet of air fell away, she mouthed a silent prayer.

The wheels touched down harder than expected from a sudden downdraft, then bounced back up. When the plane dropped again, the starboard wing wheel caught sand and stuck while the port wheel bounced again, leaving the wing exposed. A crosswind through a break in the trees grabbed and lifted it, dipping the starboard wing tip dangerously low. A moment of light equilibrium told Colding the plane was poised to flip. She immediately steered to port with all the power her lone engine would give her, dropping that wing again, hard. This time the wheel stuck. Only now, they were headed straight for the surrounding scrub. She slewed the controls back immediately to realign them with the runway.

Because she’d gunned the engine to get the plane back on course, the end of the runway was racing up on them faster than she’d anticipated. Colding applied all the aerobraking the flaps would give her. She then calmly killed the remaining engine, hoping the prop drag would slow them down enough. It wasn’t like touch and go had been an option from the onset.

Slowly, painfully, they rolled to a stop, gravity and friction doing the rest of the work. The Orion came to rest a couple dozen feet from the end of the runway, a Hunter no more.

An eerie silence descended through the cabin as their situation settled in. If they didn’t find a way to get airborne again, they would be stuck here for the duration. Wherever here was. But Colding knew that here might not exist soon if certain policymakers won their argument.

Now that the plane had stopped moving, she was exhausted. Alves noticed and took over, like a good second should. First, he popped in a fresh stick of gum.

“Ok, listen up,” he called over the intercom. “We’ve got a lot to do to get back in the air. First, we run through our post-landing checklists as normal. I want reports on any and all damage and systems malfunctions. Second, Garcia, you and your crew break into the survival kit. Take the water packets and see if you can flush the engine intakes. If it’s just salt, we should be able to refire them and get back in the air. That’s our top priority. Friedel, see if you can nail down our exact position and reestablish comms with base. Let’s get on it, people. We don’t want to be here come sunset.”

“No one is to stray too far from the plane,” Colding added, trying to keep the weariness from her voice. “Strand, you and Zuma help Redmond inventory our survival supplies. Everything, including personal effects. Then identify any equipment that isn’t flight critical that we can easily remove. We’ll need to shed weight to make this runway work. Alves and I will assess the strip after we inspect the exterior of the plane.”

“I recommend we establish a security perimeter,” Strand stated flatly, his input unrequested. His tone made it sound like an order, which Colding didn’t appreciate. “Someone must have seen us land.”

She conceded the second point but not the first. “Zuma will establish a lookout and alert us if anyone approaches. But remember, we’re here to help the locals. They are not the enemy.”

“With all due respect, ma’am,” Strand drawled, “I think you underestimate the power of desperation. The indigenes won’t see us as help. They’ll see us as a source of supplies they need to survive. We need to defend our position.”

“We have neither the time nor resources to pursue your recommended course of action, which in my estimation is counterproductive.” Colding hated how much mil-speak she’d picked up already just from the daily briefings. But she had to speak a language she knew he would understand. “This isn’t a military flight, Strand. There’s no rifle in the survival kit. There’s probably not even bear-spray, just a knife. Our best defense right now is to get back into the air ASAP. That is our primary objective.”

“If we’re stuck here,” Strand responded with more arrogance than sense, “we’ll need to adjust those priorities.”

“Noted,” Colding replied icily. “Until then, you have your orders, Captain. See to them.”

“Aye, aye,” he replied with the barest edge of contempt.

Colding knew that if she didn’t keep him busy, Strand would find a way to cause trouble. She suspected he might anyway when they got home. As the plane’s commander, failure fell on her, regardless of circumstances. Hers was only the second Hurricane Hunter to go down on a mission in the Atlantic Basin. The first was more than six decades earlier, a Navy P-2 with no survivors. The Air Force had lost three planes to typhoons in the Pacific. NOAA none at all. She’d be damned if her plane and crew would add to those statistics.

Within moments, she was too busy to think about it more. Routine and training were their keys to survival right now. She and Alves ticked through their post-landing checklist. Soon, station reports came trickling in.

They were lucky. There was no damage to avionics or flight critical systems. Mostly just cosmetic dings and scratches from equipment breaking loose. The stabilizing cable between the fuselage and the tail had shorn clean away, thankfully without taking either anchor point with it. If it had whipped loose, they’d have been a brief oil slick in the Atlantic.

They weren’t as fortunate with comms. Their radar glitch had migrated to their software-defined radio, which was currently offline. It looked like their nosecone had taken a direct lightning hit that had scorched the diverter strips. There might be antenna damage, but without a full teardown, there was no way to know. At a minimum, indirect lightning effects had injected a gremlin into the electronics. Their transponder was still working, but they were beyond line of sight to any monitoring station.

Which meant they’d simply dropped off the air traffic control screens. Out of communication and presumed lost. Would base even send Search and Rescue? Unlikely, given they’d disappeared in the eyewall. By now, the C-130s would be returning to MacDill, awaiting a new guide plane tomorrow. If there was another mission. Perceived loss of life could be the excuse the hardliners needed to convince the Administration to implement their plan. That created a new sense of urgency.

What little luck they had held when Garcia and her crew flushed the intakes. All four engines refired. The controls showed no lingering ill effects. That meant they were minimally flightworthy. The hard part would be finding a way to get the plane back into the air. Realistically, they needed a full maintenance overhaul. In the past month, they’d seen more than an average season’s worth of flight hours on the airframe. And that was on top of an already record season before Alpha arose. But that wasn’t likely to happen any time soon.

Before she and Alves walked the strip, Colding set the crew on the task of removing every ounce of unnecessary weight from the plane, everything Redmond and Strand had identified. Personal gear, the dropsondes, any and all loose equipment, the smaller of the modular, rack-mounted electronics they could maneuver without a lift, even the survival kit. If they had to ditch into the thirty-foot seas, the life raft wouldn’t make much difference. The bill on the materiel they were leaving behind would be enormous. Colding didn’t care. Lives mattered more.

The biggest reserve of weight they had was fuel. They were already down a quarter of their capacity, which lightened their weight profile by a few thousand pounds. In theory, she could dump half the remainder and still have enough reserves to get back to the mainland. The problem was that with no depot, there was only one way to get rid of any remaining excess: burn it before takeoff. That was impractical. Once they were airborne, they could dump fuel over the ocean but by then it wouldn’t matter. A catch-22.

Outside, the air was warm and dry. The sky overhead was clear. The sun felt good on Colding’s face. She hadn’t seen clear skies in weeks, except intermittently before Alpha’s cloud cover had fully settled in. There was very little wind, just a constant breeze. After so long, the lack of wind was eerie. Just a whine from the distance like a gust that never quite arrived. Except for the looming charcoal clouds on all horizons, she could almost forget where they were.

Almost. The scrub and low trees lining the runway were a stark reminder they weren’t where they were supposed to be. Like they’d dropped onto a deserted tropical isle, or been transported through a rift to some hidden world like on a slow Saturday matinee movie she remembered as a kid. The constant susurration through the new, bright green leaves reminded her of whispered conversations in her college dorm, the late-night ones she couldn’t quite make out the words to but which kept her mind half-awake desperately trying to understand.

She focused on the task in front of her. The runway looked sound. Someone had spent a lot of money on it, cutting back the scrub, levelling the karst, pouring the tarmac, with all the equipment shipped in from elsewhere. But she supposed that was a minor expense compared to the cost of a private island or the private jet its owners needed to access it, when they didn’t use a yacht.

“What do you think, Alves,” Colding asked as they neared the end of it, “maybe two thousand feet?”

He critically examined the lay of the airstrip, looking first back toward the plane, then to the trees nearby. “Twenty-two hundred, best.”

“So, twelve hundred short if we’re fully loaded.” She kicked a small, dead-leafed branch at her feet. There was surprisingly little debris given the surrounding scrub looked to have been stripped nearly bare when Alpha had settled into position. Five weeks later, it had all leafed back out. Most of the detritus had blown off to the clear, grassy space lining runway.

Colding looked at the scrub on the end farthest from the plane. “How high would you say those trees are?”

Alves eyed them a moment. “Twenty-five to thirty maybe.”

Colding gazed back at the plane, doing calculations in her head. If she backed the Orion to the very edge, set the brake, then fully throttled the engines…. It all depended on how much weight they lost.

“Hello,” Alves interjected as much in surprise as to get Colding’s attention. “We’ve got company, Yeti.”

She turned to him then followed his eyes to the tree line. A face watched them from inside the shadows of the underbrush maybe twenty yards away. She caught the glint of metal lower, somewhere near its owner’s body. He, she decided.

“Hey there.” Colding called to him using her command voice, a clear calm the carried without making it sound like an order but not quite a request. “Why don’t you come out.”

He faded back as she stared but didn’t quite disappear. Like a cat torn between caution and curiosity.

“We’re here to help,” she added reassuringly.

He paused. He didn’t move for a moment, then seemed to make a decision. He stepped into the light without hesitation. A hand tried to grab his arm and missed, then pulled back into the shadows.

He was tall, an inch or two over six feet, with a once lean, athletic build that now looked gaunt in ill-fitting work clothes, faintly stained. His own, no doubt. Still, he stood straight, perhaps defiant, a machete trailing easily from his right hand.

“We’re not going to hurt anyone,” Colding said, hoping he felt the same. Alves just stood beside her, watching intently, chewing his gum.

The man used the machete to point down the runway. “That your plane?”

“Yeah,” she answered. “We’re from the States.”

“I thought you were drug runners,” he replied evenly, with a slight Caribbean lilt.

Colding tried to keep the surprise from her face, but doubted she succeeded. A non sequitur she hadn’t expected.

“You’ve heard of the Hurricane Hunters?” she asked. He nodded slowly. “That’s us.”

“It’s not safe for you here,” he said.

“We weren’t planning on staying,” Alves replied dryly.

“They will have spotted your plane and come looking,” the man continued.

“The drug runners?” Colding asked.

He nodded again. “They use the field sometimes at night when the owner isn’t here. It’s best we turn a blind eye. They’ve raided the main house a few times for supplies but otherwise have left us alone.”

“Us?” Colding probed. “How many of you are there?”

The man hesitated, realizing he’d given away more than he’d intended. He shrugged and shook his head, still intently watching her. “My wife and I are caretakers.”

“And it’s safe for you when these drug runners come?” Colding tried to map out their situation in her mind.

“We hide in the brush until they leave. They know we’re here but so far haven’t searched.”

“Just you two?” Colding gauged his weight and started calculating again.

He hesitated before answering. “Us and the children. A boy and an infant girl.”

Oh, sweet Jesus. How had they survived. Colding couldn’t imagine.

“And they’re with you.” She left it between a question and a statement, nodding toward the brush.

He stared at her opaquely, then turned over his shoulder and called a name, his eyes still never leaving hers. “Cynthia.”

A woman stepped from the shadows, a baby perched on a hip in the crock of one arm, her other hand clutching her young son’s. All their clothes were smudged but not dirty, their faces clean. The boy, maybe four, looked equally hollow and haggard as the adults. His mother’s eyes smoldered at her husband. “Ian Beneby, what have you done? Bad enough those thugs steal our children’s food.”

Colding smiled reassuringly. “It’s ok, ma’am. We’re here to help.”

“Can you lift this scourge of God?” Cynthia snapped, nodding toward the horizon.

“No, but maybe I can help you escape it,” Colding replied. Suddenly she had the attention of all three adults, including Alves. “I’m Brigid, by the way. This is Thomas. And who are these two little ones?”

Ian Beneby rested the dull side of the machete against his shoulder. “Troy and Arianna,” he said, not disguising a hint of pride.

“Don’t try your charm offensive on me, Miss Pilot,” his wife interrupted before Ian could say more, eyeing Colding critically. “My husband may be swayed by a pretty lady in a uniform, but I, for one, am not.”

Colding faced her. “Your husband told me it’s not safe here, Mrs. Beneby. He couldn’t be more right. We need to evacuate you.”

Ian now stared at her slack jawed. Alves stopped chewing his gum. Cynthia started to laugh.

“Your plane just dropped out of the sky like a heron shot by a fisherman.”

Colding nodded. The other woman had a point. But she had to convince them. If the hardliners won, they would never survive.

“We had some engine trouble but that’s all been fixed. You probably heard us test them a few minutes ago. Thomas and I are checking the runway while the rest of my crew is lightening our load.”

“And why would they do that if your engines are working perfectly?” Cynthia asked pointedly.

Colding paused, considering how best to explain it.

“See those trees at the end of the runway?” she pointed. “We just need to make sure we get high enough over them. Once we do, the rest of the flight shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Don’t talk down to me, Miss Pilot. I’ve been to university. You will be flying through a category 6 tropical cyclone the likes of which this world has never seen. And you are saying this runway is too short for your plane.”

Cynthia Beneby was sharp, Colding would give her that. She tried honesty instead. “About a thousand feet too short. If we get our weight down far enough, I should able to clear those trees. The flight home shouldn’t be a problem. We’ve flown through this storm once every three days for the past five weeks. This is the first trouble we’ve experienced.”

“And why would I trust my babies’ lives to shoulds and shouldn’ts?” Cynthia shot back.

Colding eyed her, appraising. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Because in a few days, it is likely there will be no more supply drops coming to the islands. People are saying no one on the islands could have survived, and that continuing to drop supplies would just be a waste of resources needed on the mainland.”

“The only people who receive your crates and boxes, the ones that don’t sink into the ocean, are thieves and drug runners. They are best armed and organized. They always have been because they are connected to our government. Your government has tolerated their corruption for far too long because it suits them, Miss Pilot. They know it exists and yet refuse to grant people like us asylum to escape it.”

Colding nodded gravely. “The Administration and the public need to see they’re wrong. They need to hear your story. If you come back with us, everyone will listen to what you and your husband have to say.”

“What my fool of a husband does is up to him,” Cynthia snapped, but her expression said she was considering. A decision Colding wouldn’t want on her shoulders.

“Like you said,” Colding continued, this time going from honest to blunt, “those thugs will come back to investigate the plane. What are the chances that this time they don’t search for you to find out what you know, or whether we gave you supplies? How much longer can you make it out here alone? How much food do you have for the children? We all need to leave soon or none of us will be safe.”

Cynthia Beneby chewed her lip, looking first at her young son, then at her infant daughter, obviously weighing what Colding had said. “It sounds so risky.”

“Yes, it’s a risk,” Colding admitted, “but no more than ones Thomas and I take every day. It’s our job to calculate them. We don’t take them unnecessarily. NOAA has never lost a Hurricane Hunter. Mine won’t be the first.”

Alves seemed to sense Cynthia Beneby needed one final nudge. Something Colding said must have convinced him, too. “Ma’am, I’ve flown with a lot of pilots over the years. Commander Colding is the best. I grew up in San Juan. Trust me, you’re safer on her plane in this storm than in any car in the Caribbean.”

Both Ian and Cynthia laughed at that, the tension broken. Everyone knew that driving on the islands was like entering a demolition derby staffed with unlicensed New York cabbies.

Now Cynthia looked uncertainly at her husband who nodded encouragingly. She turned back to Colding, hitching her infant a little higher onto her hip. ‘Ok, Miss Pilot. Show me this plane.”

Colding smiled as she turned away. Maybe some good could come out of this mission after all.

---

As they approached the grounded Orion, Colding saw piles of equipment stacked in the grass just off the runway. The crew had made good progress. She just hoped it was enough. No one was in sight which struck her as odd. Then she spotted Zuma lurking within the stacks of discarded electronics. When Colding raised a hand to wave, Zuma put her fingers to her mouth and emitted a long, sharp whistle.

Strand emerged from the hatchway into the plane, striding down the folding ladder. When he reached the ground, he brought up the pistol in his right hand, pointing it at Ian Beneby. Where the hell had he gotten that? He must have smuggled it back onboard in Zuma’s flight bag.

“Drop the machete,” Strand ordered in his Texas twang, sighting down the barrel at Ian’s chest.

Slowly, carefully, Ian laid the machete on the ground. It didn’t appear this was the first time he’d had a gun pointed at him.  Cynthia turned to shield little Arianna with her body, pushing Troy behind her. Ian deliberately sidestepped to position his body in front of hers.

“Strand, lower your weapon,” Colding ordered. “The Benebys are with me. They’re coming with us.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Strand replied, his eyes never leaving Ian. He crouched slightly, moving cautiously forward, stabilizing his grip on the pistol with his left hand.

Colding straightened and turned on her full command voice. “I said drop your weapon, Captain. That’s an order.”

“With all due respect, Commander, I am no longer in your chain of command.” Strand kicked the machete to one side with a foot. “This is an Air Force mission and I am the senior Air Force officer on the ground.”

The rest of the crew crowded into the hatchway of the plane, watching the situation play out. Colding wondered exactly what had transpired while she and Alves had been away. She stepped toward Strand, reaching out a hand for the pistol. He swung the barrel to her. She froze.

“Be careful who you point that at, Strand,” she observed coolly. “It’s a long walk home.”

“You aren’t the only one who can fly this plane, Colding,” he replied, his eyes darted toward Alves.

“If you think I’ll fly for you,” Alves retorted, “you’ve lost more of your mind than I thought you ever had.”

Strand smiled slowly. “I can fly this plane if I have to.”

“Don’t make me laugh,” Alves shot back. “Under ideal circumstances your limited training might suffice. With an experienced crew, which I doubt you’ll have behind you. But you’re pointing a gun at the only pilot I know who can clear the trees at the end of a very short runway. How you’ll explain that when you get back is beyond me.”

“Security risk,” Strand stated tersely, eyeing Colding. “We’re too tight on weight as it is.”

“I’ve already run the calculations, Strand,” Colding explained calmly “These four people aren’t the difference between getting airborne and not. The only obstacle right now is you.”

“You told them what’s coming, didn’t you?” Strand’s aim didn’t waver. “You’re endangering the mission.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, Captain,” she responded, remind him she still outranked him, “these people are the mission.”

“Not for long,” he replied with certainty. “In two days, we start taking care of our own like we should have from the beginning. We’ll do what you and your bleeding-heart scientists have been unwilling to do from the beginning; we’ll solve the problem of Hurricane Alpha. Permanently.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Alves demanded. “Solve it how?”

When Strand met him with stony silence, he looked to Colding for an answer.

“If I read the situation right,” she said slowly but loudly enough for the crew in the doorway to hear, “the Air Force wants to drop two twenty-megaton bombs into the eye of this storm to try to disperse it, in accordance with Jack Reed’s 1959 Plowshare Program plan. They want to militarize NOAA so our Orions can fly recon for the bombers, as well as to silence our dissent.”

“That’s crazy,” Alves exclaimed. “If they were going to do that, why wait five weeks?”

Colding didn’t face her copilot, just kept watching Strand for his reaction as she unveiled a theory based on what she’d read. “They probably needed time to recondition a couple weapons from the stockpiles. We don’t have anything that big right now.”

Her revelation was met by stunned silence that simmered toward outrage as a smug smile played at the corners of Strand’s mouth. She was right.

A new sound caught Colding’s attention, a steady, high-pitched whine that rose above the distant wind. Outboards. Approaching at full throttle. Strand cocked his head.

“You hear that, Strand?” Colding said. “That’s decision time approaching. Those are drug runners coming to check out our plane and turn over the island for supplies. And I guarantee they will be better armed than you.”

“How do you know that?” he asked skeptically, narrowing his eyes.

“Because I talk to people rather than pointing guns at them. Now you have a choice, Captain,” she used his rank honorarily at this point, knowing he wouldn’t keep it long if they returned. “You either let us do our jobs, or you can reenact the Alamo as a one-man play. Me and my crew are the only ones who can get this plane off the ground before those men get here. You’re running out of time.”

Strand hesitated a moment, then seemed to relax slightly as if he’d made a decision. When he started to swing the pistol back toward the Benebys, Colding moved and Alves with her. Colding stepped inside Strand’s guard, clamping her arm over his while Alves grabbed for the gun. Strand was strong, strong enough to move her body with his arm. Two shots rang out. Behind her, someone shrieked.

Colding brought up a knee as hard as she could but missed her target, connecting only with Strand’s thigh. She quickly brought down the heel of her boot on the top his foot. That earned her a blow to the head from his left hand, one that left her ear ringing. She lost her balance but desperately clung to her hold on his arm, sending both of them tumbling over sideways. She pinned her body onto Strand’s elbow hoping to give Alves an opportunity. Her copilot stomped Strand’s hand with his flight boot. She heard the snap of dry kindling. A moment later, Strand slumped in defeat as Alves came up with the pistol and pointed it at him.

Colding turned toward the Benebys, expecting the worst. Both adults stared at the scene before them in horror, but otherwise looked unharmed. Troy burrowed into his mother’s legs, while Arianna let out howl of fear as loud as a warning siren that drowned out the approaching boats.

As she clambered back to her feet, Colding stared down at Strand. “I should leave your two-hundred pounds of deadweight here. But that’s not what we do.”

She turned to crew in the door of the plane. “Redmond, zip-tie his mutinous ass and throw him in back. Everyone else, prepare for takeoff. I want this plane turned around and wheels up in fifteen, if not sooner. Move with a purpose, people.”

Colding was surprised it took no convincing to get the Benebys to board the plane after the violence on the tarmac. Ian Beneby summed it up as he paused on the fold-down ladder in the doorway, staring at the bright yellow arrow marked “rescue” pointing directly at him. Distractedly, Colding thought they’d need to add a new flag to the collection trailing down the fuselage behind it once they got home.

“I will never forget what you have done here for me and my family,” he said, turning to face her.

Cynthia Beneby added, “WE will never forget, Miss Pilot. You will have saved us twice.”

Colding smiled back at them professionally. “We’re not out of here yet.”

Just then, the whine of motorboats ceased. Ian said it would take the men ten minutes to hike through the brush to the landing strip. Less if they hurried.

They strapped the Benebys into spare seats, one of which was Strand’s. Cynthia held her infant daughter on her lap. Not ideal but there was no other choice. Redmond strapped Strand into a seat as far away as he could.

“We’ll have to roll through the checklist hot, “Colding informed the crew. “Cut out everything nonessential. Critical systems and safety only.”

As soon as she and Alves buckled into the cockpit, Colding fired up the engines and conducted a three point turn on the pad at the end of the runway. Zuma, who had the good sense to look stricken at what Strand had done, claiming she hadn’t known what he’d intended, relayed instructions and their position from the ground to Redmond in the doorway who then shouted them forward to Garcia and the cockpit.

Colding backed the Orion’s wheels to within a foot of the ragged edge of the tarmac. The tail section overhung the grassy clearing between the strip and the edge of the brush. With the added weight of their four new passengers, they’d need every extra inch. Once they were positioned, Zuma climbed back aboard. Redmond pulled up the ladder and sealed the hatch behind her.

“Door secure. Passengers and crew strapped in,” he relayed over the intercom.

Passengers. That was a word Colding wasn’t used to hearing.

She engaged the brake and set the flaps for maximum lift. She and Alves ran through an abbreviated checklist, double checking that they hadn’t overlooked anything critical. There would be no time for recovery if something went wrong.

After confirming each station was secure and ready, Colding throttled the engines to just below their redline maximum. Once the props were fully up to speed, she released the brake.

The heavy plane not so much jumped as surged forward, gaining speed as they steadily rolled down the runway. Alves called out the estimated remaining distance.

“Seventeen hundred feet.”

They were moving slower than Colding had anticipated. They hadn’t shed enough weight.

“Twelve hundred feet.”

Colding expected to feel a lightness to the plane but it still remained solidly connected to the tarmac, despite their groundspeed being near what it would have been at almost double that distance on a routine takeoff.

“We’re not going to make it, Yeti.” Alves covered his mike and shouted directly at her so the rest of the crew wouldn’t hear. “Now or never to abort.”

Colding nudged the throttle a fraction farther forward. “When pigs fly.”

“Seven hundred feet,” he continued his countdown.

Colding finally felt the lightness she’d expected. Garcia informed her all four engines were now flickering into red. Come on, girl, you can do this.

“Five hundred feet.” Alves’s voice betrayed his concern.

Just then, a group of men emerged from the brush in front of them, near where she and Alves had first encountered the Benebys. In the center of the runway, they brandished assault rifles, waving the plane to stop.

Too late for that, gentlemen. Colding wound up the engines with all the remaining throttle she had. The men dove to the ground, scrambling out of her way.

“Three hundred feet.” Alves voice rose, intoning a warning. They were running out of space and time. The wall of trees rushed toward them second by second. Second by second, the wheels bounced a little higher.

Zuma broke into the intercom with a VFR report. “Commander, we’re taking fire from our six. I think our friends back there are unhappy they missed their flight.”

“They’ll just have to be content with the luggage we left at the gate,” Redmond quipped back lightly.

Colding didn’t laugh, just kept focused on threading the needle with her plane. If their bullets hit anything vital, theirs would be a tragically short flight.

“Two hundred feet,” Alves called out, his voice tightening further.

Colding felt the wheels part from the ground one last time. She immediately pulled back on the yoke.

“Retrack landing gear,” she ordered as calm as if she were noting an interesting weather phenomenon. The mechanism whirred and thunked as it locked the wheels back into the plane.

When they reached the trees at the end of the grassy warning strip, Colding could almost feel the new, green leaves tickle the bottom of fuselage.

Once she was certain the plane had enough air beneath it, she waggled the wings as a final taunt to the men behind her, then banked to gain as much altitude as possible within the calm at the center of the storm before confronting the looming gray eyewall before them.

“Cinch up those straps, people,” she announced over the intercom. “We’re headed home.”

---

Three days later, Colding and Alves stood in the sheltered doorway behind the hanger, watching through the sheeting rain as the wind and waves continued to undermine the O-Club at the base. Parts of its foundation now hung over open air. The road just north of it was gone. The main runway would be next. They’d have to abandon the air base soon.

She was still in her dark blue uniform although, technically, she was no longer employed by NOAA. None of the airwing was now, only the research fleet. But the Director had insisted she wear it, she suspected for a photo-op when they landed. It had taken three days to spring the Gulfstream, which wouldn’t be officially turned over to the Air Force until after it gave her a lift home. Most of that time, Colding had spent in debriefing, explaining up through the chain of command exactly what had transpired on the mission, where the bullet holes in her plane had come from, who had ordered  a crew member restrained for the return flight, why she’d made an emergency landing at the international airport just a few miles to the south and inland of the base, and how the press and an immigration judge just happened to be on-hand.

That and filling out all the additional paperwork confirming her early retirement.

“Did you see the Benebys on the news last night?” Alves brought her back to the moment. “Cynthia gave as good as she got. I’ve never seen O’Really at a loss for words.”

Colding smiled. Cynthia Beneby would make the perfect advocate for her islands. All talk of nukes had gone silent overnight. Not that all they would have done was create a radioactive storm that would have further devastated the Florida coast. The Administration would have known that if they’d listened to their own scientists.

“I couldn’t get past the talk of a Presidential pardon for how ‘unfairly’ we treated Strand,” Colding replied.

Alves snorted.

She turned back to face him, trying to picture him in his new uniform. It would be odd not to see him in her same dark blue. She wasn’t sure Air Force green fit him. “It sounds like that man might still have powerful friends, Thomas. You sure you’ll be ok?”

“Not powerful enough,” Alves replied. “Zuma’s been undermining him at every opportunity. She feels pretty sorely used.”

“She should,” Colding agreed, although she wondered how much the other woman had really known.

“The crew all stand by you,” Alves continued. “None of us will ever forget that incredible piece of flying. Hell, we’ll never have to buy drinks in an O-Club again. We can all say we flew with a genuine hero, the only NOAA pilot to be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for a takeoff under fire.”

“Don’t believe it until they pin me with a medal,” she admonished him. “They’re more likely to bring me up on charges if they can. Or we’ll be taught as the last NOAA flight from hell. Our names will live in infamy.”

Alves eyes twinkled mischievously. “That nets free drinks, too, Yeti.”

They fell into a comfortable silence, staring out as the next feeder band crashed ashore. Hard to believe that in only six weeks, this had become routine.

“How much longer do you think it will last?” Alves finally asked, seeming to read her mind.

Colding shrugged. “It can’t be much. It’s almost December for Christ’s sake. The Atlantic should be as cold as hell by now.”

“I hear they’ve detected a drop in central pressure that might be more than eyewall replacement. There’s talk it might dissipate in place.”

“Sounds like wishful thinking,” Colding said staring back out. “I believe that about as much as the talk of rescue operations.”

Their conversation lapsed again into silence. Rain pelted the roof overhanging their temporary shelter.

“Why do you think it’s here? “Alves asked idly. Turning to her, he added, “Alpha?”

Colding shrugged then shook her head. “Hubris?”

“I am beginning to think Cynthia Beneby is right,” Alves continued. “It’s a scourge from God. But for whose sins?”

Colding smiled as the answer formed inside her head. The sins of a society that creates men like Strand and then promotes them to the highest ranks of power.

Before she could give it voice, someone pounded on the inside of the metal door behind them. A second later, it cracked open. Friedel stuck his head out. “The Gulfstream’s almost ready. Roll-out in five minutes.”

“That’s your cue, Lt. Alves. Or should I say Captain?” Colding smiled, clapping him on the shoulder. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

When the door behind her shut, she stared back out at Alpha, wondering when it, too, would grow weary of fighting nature and retire like its name.

© 2019 Edward P. Morgan III

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