Амброз Бирс - Flight or Fright - 17 Turbulent Tales

We climbed through 7000 feet and I was wondering if I could persuade my family to go see a movie that night, when the Lear seemed to run into a brick wall. In that instant I felt sure we’d had a midair collision and that the three of us on the plane—both pilots and me—were going to die. The little galley flew open and vomited its contents. The cushions of the unoccupied seats shot into the air. The little jet tilted…tilted some more…then rolled completely over. I felt that part, but didn’t see it. I had closed my eyes. My life didn’t flash before me. I didn’t think But I had so much more to do . There was no sense of acceptance (or non-acceptance, for that matter). There was just the surety that my time had come.

Then the plane leveled out. From the cockpit, the co-pilot was yelling, “Steve! Steve! All okay back there?”

I said it was. I looked at the litter in the aisle, which included sandwiches, a salad, and a piece of cheesecake with strawberry topping. I looked at the yellow oxygen masks hanging down. I asked—in an admirably calm voice—what had happened. My two-man flight crew didn’t know then, although they suspected and later confirmed that we had had a near miss with a Delta 747, had been caught in its exhaust, and tossed like a paper airplane in a gale.

In the twenty-five years since, I have been a good deal more sanguine about air travel, having had a first-hand experience of just how much trauma modern aircraft can withstand, and how calm and efficient good pilots (which is most of them) can be when the chips are down. One told me, “You train and re-train, so that when six hours of absolute boredom become twelve seconds of maximum danger, you know exactly what to do.”

In the stories that follow, you will encounter everything from a gremlin perched on the wing of a 727 to transparent monsters that live far above the clouds. You will encounter time travel and ghost planes. Most of all, you will experience those twelve seconds of maximum danger, when the worst things that can go wrong high in the air do go wrong. You will encounter claustrophobia, cowardice, terror, and moments of bravery. If you are planning a trip on Delta, American, Southwest, or one of the other airlines, you would be well advised to pack a John Grisham or Nora Roberts book instead of this one. Even if you are safe on the ground, you might want to buckle up nice and tight.

Because the ride is going to get rough.

Stephen King

November 2, 2017

E. Michael Lewis, who will be piloting our maiden flight, studied creative writing at the University of Puget Sound and lives in the Pacific Northwest. Let his Loadmaster usher you aboard a Lockheed C-141A StarLifter (like the one on display at McChord Air Museum that is said to be haunted) about to take off from Panama on a delivery mission to the United States. The StarLifter is a workhorse plane capable of transporting loads up to 70,000 pounds over short distances. It can carry a hundred paratroopers, a hundred and fifty combat troops, trucks and Jeeps, even Minuteman ICBMs. Or smaller loads. Coffins, for instance. Some stories chill your blood; here is one that will creep up your spine, inch by inch, and linger in your brain for a long, long time.

Welcome aboard.

I dreamt of cargo. Thousands of crates filled the airplane’s hold, all made of unfinished pine, the kind that drives slivers through work gloves. They were stamped with unknowable numbers and bizarre acronyms that glowed fiercely with dim red light. They were supposed to be jeep tires, but some were as large as a house, others as small as a spark plug, all of them secured to pallets with binding like straitjacket straps. I tried to check them all, but there were too many. There was a low shuffling as the boxes shifted, then the cargo fell on me. I couldn’t reach the interphone to warn the pilot. The cargo pressed down on me with a thousand sharp little fingers as the plane rolled, crushing the life out of me even as we dived, even as we crashed, the interphone ringing now like a scream. But there was another sound too, from inside the crate next to my ear. Something struggled inside the box, something sodden and defiled, something that I didn’t want to see, something that wanted out .

It changed into the sound of a clipboard being rapped on the metal frame of my crew house bunk. My eyes shot open. The airman—new in-country, by the sweat lining his collar—stood over me holding the clipboard between us, trying to decide if I was the type to rip his head off just for doing his job. “Tech Sergeant Davis,” he said, “they need you on the flight line right away.”

I sat up and stretched. He handed me the clipboard and attached manifest: a knocked-down HU-53 with flight crew, mechanics, and medical support personnel bound for…somewhere new.

“Timehri Airport?”

“It’s outside Georgetown, Guyana.” When I looked blank, he went on, “It’s a former British colony. Timehri used to be Atkinson Air Force Base.”

“What’s the mission?”

“It’s some kind of mass med-evac of ex-pats from somewhere called Jonestown.”

Americans in trouble. I’d spent a good part of my Air Force career flying Americans out of trouble. That being said, flying Americans out of trouble was a hell of a lot more satisfying than hauling jeep tires. I thanked him and hurried into a clean flight suit.

I was looking forward to another Panamanian Thanksgiving at Howard Air Force Base—eighty-five degrees, turkey and stuffing from the mess hall, football on Armed Forces Radio, and enough time out of flight rotation to get good and drunk. The in-bound hop from the Philippines went by the numbers and both the passengers and cargo were free and easy. Now this.

Interruption was something you grew accustomed to as a Loadmaster. The C-141 StarLifter was the largest freighter and troop carrier in the Military Air Command, capable of carrying seventy thousand pounds of cargo or two hundred battle-ready troops and flying them anywhere in the world. Half as long as a football field, the high-set, swept-back wings drooped bat-like over the tarmac. With an upswept T-tail, petal-doors, and a built-in cargo ramp, the StarLifter was unmatched when it came to moving cargo. Part stewardess and part moving man, my job as a Loadmaster was to pack it as tight and as safe as possible.

With everything onboard and my weight and balance sheets complete, the same airman found me cussing up the Panamanian ground crew for leaving a scuffmark on the airframe.

“Sergeant Davis! Change in plans,” he yelled over the whine of the forklift. He handed me another manifest.

“More passengers?”

“New passengers. Med crew is staying here.” He said something unintelligible about a change of mission.

“Who are these people?”

Again, I strained to hear him. Or maybe I heard him fine and with the sinking in my gut, I wanted him to repeat it. I wanted to hear him wrong.

“Graves registration,” he cried.

That’s what I’d thought he’d said.

Timehri was your typical third world airport—large enough to squeeze down a 747, but strewn with potholes and sprawling with rusted Quonset huts. The low line of jungle surrounding the field looked as if it had been beaten back only an hour before. Helicopters buzzed up and down and US servicemen swarmed the tarmac. I knew then that things must be bad.

Outside the bird, the heat rising from the asphalt threatened to melt the soles of my boots even before I had the wheel chocks in place. A ground crew of American GIs approached, anxious to unload and assemble the chopper. One of them, bare chested with his shirt tied around his waist, handed me a manifest.