Джон Болл - Phase Three Alert

By the time that he had donned his arctic gear and climbed down the four steps into the hold, the rear ramp had already been dropped and two men on skis were just exiting out onto the snow. They were roped together in the manner of mountaineers and had a small sled on which the runway markers had been loaded. That phase of the operation was well underway and Ferguson dismissed it from his attention.

The heater unit was next; it too had been sled mounted in order to make it reasonably movable on the surface of the ice cap. Sergeant Stovers was busy supervising its unloading and no additional help was needed. Ferguson chose the open crew door and stepped out himself into the sterile cold of the fantastic plateau. Comfortable in his arctic clothing, he looked with renewed wonder at the old hulk that had been standing in such total desolation for so long. He could not help wondering if, in some strange manner that humans could not grasp, she understood that she was once more receiving visitors; that her all but endless vigil, waiting for her pilots to return, was, for the moment, over.

Since it would take a while to get the heater operating and the door thawed out once more, he walked around to the front of the old bird and drank in the contrast between her and the C-130 turboprop that was poised almost wingtip to wingtip. What a change in twenty-odd years of aircraft design!

Now that he knew what her name had been, he studied the nose of the old bomber and made out the letters for himself. The tail number was still quite clear, but the paint that had been used to christen her had not been of equal quality. There she sat, dead without knowing it, still putting up a pretext that she was an aircraft with her nose lifted toward the sky.

Ferguson’s imagination frequently took off on its own without filing a flight plan as to its intentions. As he looked at the outdated wreck, he wished that some good fairy would grant him three wishes. He stood quietly in the snow, ignoring the splendid C-130 that was his to fly, and thought about the abandoned aircraft that had never lived to fulfill her destiny. She was a hulk, but she still looked like an airplane, and that was enough to win his sympathy.

Sergeant Feinberg approached, a huge bear of a man in his heavy arctic clothing. “We’ve got the heater going and we’ll be inside shortly,” he advised. “I told the boys that you’d given the order she was not to be chopped up and that whatever was taken off was to be removed properly. Is that right?”

“That’s right!” Ferguson replied, and he practically barked the words.

Almost as though they had been working on that type of aircraft all of their lives, three of Perry Feinberg’s boys were busy removing the number four propeller. The powerful portable heating unit threw a steady stream of warm air inside the fuselage as Lieutenant Jenkins and Sergeant Holcomb scraped the encrusted snow off the places where it had lodged and pitched it down into the bomb bay. Ferguson lent a hand on the job, but as each bit of the interior was cleared, he paid close attention to what was being uncovered. With his arctic gloves on his hands he prodded the banked-up snow along the bottom sides of the fuselage. When he uncovered the corner of something that was clearly a wooden crate, a savage thrill of discovery took hold of him. With two or three minutes additional work he had it clear and as far as he could tell, it was the sensitive cargo he had been sent to recover.

As anticipated, it was frozen down as firmly as though it had been riveted in place.

He continued with his exploration and within a matter of minutes he had unsnowed two additional crates not too different from his initial find. He was satisfied then that one of them would be the critical item, safe and sound after three decades of unguarded isolation.

The heater would have all of the crates thawed out within a reasonable time, he postulated. Inwardly he was secretly glad that it would probably not be too soon; in a somewhat strange mood that he himself could not recognize, he was in no hurry to leave. He had the thought that he would never be returning here again and at his age he disliked to close any door behind him finally and forever.

He paid another visit to the cockpit, planning to content himself by simply looking at the frozen controls. For a moment he put his right hand on the four throttles and imagined that he was indeed pushing them forward. Then he remembered; he couldn’t do that — they were working on one of the props.

Ferguson wanted some part of her to keep for his own, as a symbol of a new-found friendship between man and machine. He had not even been born when she had last flown, but they met now as adults.

The cushion on the pilot’s seat probably would be thawed out in a little while. The fleeting heat would warm up the old bird a bit before the perpetual cold would return. It was one amenity she had been granted as a kind of posthumous salute. He promised silently that he would use the cushion whenever he could and in that small way help the aircraft to regain her self-respect.

He looked out and saw that the number four prop was already off; loaded on the heater sled, it was being taken on board the C-130. After all, it was a reasonable thing that they had done, even though he didn’t like to see the B-17 dismembered like that. He sat down inside the still-warming fuselage and contented himself with doing nothing.

At 1212 hours Bill Stovers brought him a box lunch and a cup of hot coffee. It had been a helluva long time, Ferguson thought, since anyone had sat and drunk hot coffee inside that old bird.

He looked out and noted that part of the crew was back in the Here, presumably eating and using the head, but the rest were still at work. A substantial A-frame had been rigged over the number four nacelle; it took him a while to awake to the fact that they were also removing the number four engine.

Taking off an engine was hard work, particularly under the existing circumstances — it was cold out there. He watched and marveled at the fact that the men at work seemed to be genuinely enjoying themselves. With a small blast heater, which was another piece of cargo he had not noticed on board, they were thawing out the bolts and connections. No one was using a hacksaw; everything was being disconnected properly.

Dammit, maybe he wasn’t the only sentimental slob in the whole stiff-necked Air Force! He got up and tested one of the crates for movement; it showed some signs of loosening. He finished his lunch and gathered up the small amount of trash. Feeling a little guilty that he had absented himself for so long, he redonned his parka and climbed down the crew hole into the sharply cold air outside. He had to move a piece of canvas that had been used to block the space between the heater hose and the door frame to do it. As he dropped into the snow, he noted that the door itself had been removed.

Two men were carrying what appeared to be the left elevator into the back of the C-130. The passion for souvenirs appeared to have no limit.

Sergeant Stovers, quite suddenly looking like a man who had emerged from his shell, came briskly toward him. “Sir,” he said, “we’d appreciate it very much if you’d give us a hand. We’re trying to get the number four engine off and it’s going to take every available man to do it.”

Ferguson went willingly and ignoring the matter of rank joined Jenkins and Corbin in helping on the ropes that had been expertly slung around the power plant. He estimated quickly: the engine delivered 1,200 horsepower and therefore it would weigh something like 2,400 pounds. A careful look at the block and tackle hung from the A-frame satisfied him that the ratio was right, three men would be able to do it.