Awakening anw-2 Read online

  The tips of the aircraft show behind hangars as we drive closer to the ramp. I look in my side mirror and note the guns on top of the Humvees behind swiveling to the buildings as we pass. Apparently they feel the same menace or are just being cautious. I notice some of the tall grass trampled down in front of the buildings where I sensed night runners. I take note. That will be another indication that night runners are housed within and I put a marker in my mind to mention it. If we didn’t have so much pavement on the earth, we’d be able to ascertain more by the paths the night runners create over time. However, I don’t plan for them to be in our neighborhood for much longer so the thought is kind of moot anyway.

  We pull onto the ramp and park behind the C-130 that is going to be our sanctuary for the next few days. The tired feeling is mixed with anticipation. I am also feeling a little nervous. The high clouds indicate a change in the weather coming or that we’ll have enroute. It’s not that I’m worried about flying in the clouds per se but I want to keep an eye on the ground to back up our inertial navigation. I’m sure I’ll feel more comfortable once I can verify its accuracy. Well, I know it’s accurate but I am the type that likes to have that verification, especially without other navigation gear as a backup. Plus, it’s not the best season for venturing to the southwest. My mind is still on the potential for thunderstorms.

  The team members begin offloading gear from the Humvees and placing it on the ramp. We’ll load it up once we get the two vehicles we’re taking loaded and strapped down. Robert, Bri, Craig and I head up into the cockpit with the flight planning materials and gear. Setting our gear on the bunk and helmets in the seats, Bri turns on the power so we can start loading our route into the flight computer. Robert steps away from his seat to allow access to the flight computer console.

  Shaking my head, I say, “You load it in.”

  Robert sits and begins loading the data in, pausing every so often as he tries to remember the various screens and where to input the information. I watch over his shoulder because, well, after all, I’ll be flying in the same aircraft and not all that keen on wandering all over the globe in search of the southwestern desert. Craig crowds in to watch and I give him a heads up as to what Robert is doing.

  With the flight plan inputted, we head to the back to load the two Humvees we’ll be taking into the aircraft and chain them down. It’s not the most graceful of maneuvers but we manage to get them both in reasonably straight and secured. We load the gear complete with crates of ammo, food, and water. There isn’t much room left inside when we finish. Red, Echo, and Blue team settle in where they can with most folding down and taking the outside red nylon seats. Gonzalez and McCafferty follow Robert, Craig, Bri, and myself up the steps into the cockpit. Robert moves over to the right seat to take his usual place as co-pilot and buckles in. I tap him on his shoulder.

  “What?” Robert says turning around. I merely point to the left seat but he only gives me a look of confusion.

  “You’re sitting in the wrong seat,” I say.

  Robert continues to look confused but it changes to a startled one as he recognizes what I’m saying. I want him to fly as the pilot-in-command. I direct Craig into the co-pilot seat. I want to give Robert some confidence and for them to work together as they will be flying this one back in a short time. It’s not the most desirable solution but it’s the only one we have. I’ll leave Bri with them and take both Gonzalez and McCafferty with me. It will be busier in our aircraft but it will be manageable.

  I look over to the nav station where Nic sat, or at least the seat she sat at in the HC-130, and feel a deep pang of missing her. It seems like she should be with us sitting in her usual place. A tremendous sadness comes over me thinking of my precious daughter. I miss the sound of her laughter and her smile that brightened my life every time I saw it; her dark hair and hazel eyes. I really miss her! Tears well up in my eyes wanting my sweet girl back. “I love you and miss you so much, Nic,” I say quietly before turning back to where Robert, Craig, and Bri are conducting their startup checks.

  While not as fast as in previous flights, the checks are accomplished and we taxi out. I am standing just behind Robert and next to Bri in her flight engineer seat. Robert runs the throttles up and we are soon in the air. The clean-up checks proceed smoothly but I can tell Robert is nervous about being in command. His instructions sometimes sound like questions but he is doing a great job. I can kind of understand that though, he is a teenager giving commands to a grown man about flying a large four-engine aircraft. Bri is performing her checks and operating the systems perfectly. I am so proud of them.

  Michael lies asleep in his lair after a successful night of hunting, dreaming deeply of the chase. The lair seems empty after being inhabited only a short time ago by other members of his pack. He continues to assimilate his new memories with the old. His relative awareness grows. He hunts alone at night and shuts himself out from the others; the awareness of them placed to the side but still with a vague perception of them.

  He sits bolt upright instantly alert. Something brought him out of his dream. He looks around the darkened room that has grown chillier with each coming day. He sees everything in the room despite the inky black of the interior. Something different brushes his mind. He senses more than feels a vibrating and rumbling noise outside but what catches his attention is that faint whisper in his head. It’s different than the feel and touch of the others of his kind. A second later, he knows it’s one of the two-legged.

  He feels a sense as strong as his. Different, yet strong. It was just a light brush but enough for him to become aware of it. He feels confused and intrigued but of worry also surfaces. Michael finds it strange that he can sense one of the two-legged even if just for a moment. He waits for another sensing but nothing appears. The vibration and rumbling fade into the distance. Tiredness from the night’s hunt takes hold once again. He lays on the carpeted floor and falls back to sleep.

  Rising with the setting of the sun, he stretches in the dark and readies himself for another night of hunting. Eagerness spills into his eyes. He lives for the hunt and the thrill of the chase. With that feeling inside, he ventures out like he does every night and tests the air for scents. The night has more moisture than those previous. This is good news as the moist air will carry the scent of prey better. He lifts his nostrils to the cloudy night sky. The remembrance of the touch on his mind surfaces and he glances quickly to his left towards the large two-legged lair.

  He stands a moment and, although he is eager to be off on the hunt, he knows it will have to wait. The intrigue of that brush speaks louder than his desire for the chase. With a move so quick that it would startle most humans, one minute standing still and the next moving, he lopes toward the lair he has avoided so far.

  He keeps his presence and ability to sense others in the back of his mind yet keeps alert as he draws closer to the tall walls. He expects the feeling of the two-legged one he felt to return as he nears. The ability is limited by distance. Not knowing why he sensed a two-legged one, he thinks the distance may limit it even more. He senses nothing as he draws cautiously to the walls. The smell of the two-legged prey behind the walls increases. Their scent is strong in the air, especially seeing they have been there for a length of time.

  He looks to the walls. He can’t see any way to scale their heights. He doesn’t hear any of the two-legged ones so throws caution to the wind and takes a running leap in an attempt to reach the top but falls several feet short. He looks down the wall’s length, stretching past his vision, seeing no change in the height. Michael backs up farther and tries again but with the same result. Looking carefully for any hand holds he missed on first glance, he sees nothing he can use. He looks to the ground and begins to dig where the wall meets the tall grass. He manages to get a foot down but has to stop as the soil becomes too hard. The wall follows his path downward. There’s no way under.

  Feeling frustration at not being able to sense whatever brushed his mind d
uring his sleep nor gain entrance, he lopes along the wall looking for any change. He circumnavigates the entire boundary without finding any. Picking up the scent of additional prey behind the seemingly insurmountable walls, his frustration increases. The trip around has taken a large part of his time for hunting. The smell of prey is tantalizingly close but he can’t get to it. He knows he must be off if he is to feed tonight. With a shriek of frustration and rage, he lopes into the night to use the last few hours to find food.

  The sun vanishes behind the upper layer of clouds as we begin our climb. I ask Robert to keep us down low and give our sanctuary a low pass; kind of a farewell if you will. He levels off and descends slightly turning further to the south, picks up I-5 and follows it. We are only around five hundred feet above ground; not too low but not terribly high either. The changing weather brings the occasionally choppy turbulence but Robert handles it fine. The walls of the sanctuary come into view and we head directly for the green roof of Cabela’s. Well, not directly at it as that would entail smacking into it. That’s not the optimal idea. Any move in that direction would most definitely garner my undivided attention. We more fly towards it.

  As we approach the tall gray walls surrounding the compound, I feel a sudden intrusion into my mind. It’s not like the other night runner’s I have felt. This one is, well, it’s hard to describe, but I would say there is a greater strength to it and, as odd as it sounds, it’s more aware. It’s just a feeling and I only feel it for a moment. As fast as it came, it’s gone. I look immediately out of the left window where the feeling emanated from. Several large stores and strip malls are across the highway from Cabela’s but I pinpoint exactly where the sensation came from.

  There is a Safeway store nestled in a large strip mall a little ways away. That’s the same Safeway where I had that strange vision, I think wondering exactly what it was, or is, that I felt. It felt like a night runner but not exactly. I store the episode in the back of mind. Part of me wants to cast forth to see what it was, to see if I can sense it again, but something holds me back. Perhaps I don’t want to know.

  We fly over the walls and the parking lots slide underneath. Robert gives a rock of the wings, puts the power up, and begins to climb into the morning sky. I give a last look at the Safeway as it slides past our wing. I store the presence I felt in the back of mind to ponder over later. We have a flight to make.

  An Answer is Found

  We continue our climb with the high clouds drawing closer the higher we go. I notice the images and sense of the night runners, which I’ve placed in their own mental compartment, dissipate and vanish altogether as we gain altitude and distance. Mount Rainier slides by our wing and we fly above the brown fields of central and eastern Washington. The Columbia River comes into view soon after. We draw even closer to the clouds and it is apparent we won’t be able to reach our planned altitude of flight level 200 — 20,000 feet.

  “Robert, level off here,” I say as we approach 17,000 feet. “I want to keep a visual reference with the ground.”

  “Okay, Dad,” he says into the intercom.

  I plugged into the navigator station with the longer crew chief cord so I can walk around and be close to Robert just in case. He has handled himself well but if something happens, I want to be close. He levels off and powers back to a normal cruise flight setting. I get Bri’s attention and nod to McCafferty. She gets my meaning and slides out of her seat allowing McCafferty to take over the flight engineer duties. We begin broadcasting on both the UHF and VHF emergency frequencies and plan to do so every half hour.

  The clouds vanish as we head across the northeastern part of Oregon and Robert climbs to our originally planned altitude. The forested hills of the Blue Mountains slide quickly past and before long we see Boise off our nose. I check the inertial nav with ground references. It’s right on which alleviates that stress to a certain extent. The sky is clear as the city slides just off the left side. There isn’t a smoke line drifting skyward from the city. Although we are at altitude, there doesn’t appear there is any movement either. The crisscross pattern of streets lies empty.

  There is one exception. A mess of rubble lies close to the center of town blocking the streets. We pass over the empty city knowing that when night comes, the streets will be full of activity. It’s as if the city is holding its breath during the day and is itself fearful of the night setting. All cities seem to have this aspect. The age of mankind as we knew it is just a memory; held in the walls and streets of mankind’s structure.

  Mountain Home tells pretty much the same story. A few spirals of smoke from still-smoldering fires drift lazily above the base located there. There is more rubble in a parking lot where it looks like the BX or some other larger building is. Military aircraft of all types sit on the silent ramps. Each town we fly over gives off a feeling of loneliness but perhaps that is ourselves missing the world we once knew. Not much is said as we pass over the brown plains of Idaho.

  I notice a movement from McCafferty next to me as she reaches up to switch tanks. My heart almost stops in my chest as I realize what she is doing and, in the moments as my hand races towards hers, I’m hoping I will be in time. Both of her hands are reaching for the fuel switch panel, one on each side. She is attempting to switch the tanks on both sides at once. That’s not the issue though. She is about to do it in the wrong sequence. I’m not sure why I looked but I’m grateful I did. I manage to grab her hand before she turns the switch closest to me and hope it will stop her from switching the other. As my hand grabs hers, she stops all movement. Or perhaps it was me yelling “No” in the intercom. All eyes turn quickly to me startled as if expecting the plane to come apart at any moment.

  “You have to switch the pumps on, open the valves on the tank you’re switching to first, and then close the valve to the tank you’re feeding from,” I say after my heart starts beating again with a mighty pound in my chest. “If you do it the other way, there will be no fuel flowing to the engines and that’s a less than optimal situation. Plus, do one side at a time.”

  “Okay, sir. Sorry,” McCafferty says and proceeds to do it in the correct sequence.

  Bri looks from me, to the panel, and back with a look of chagrin on her face. “I’m sorry, Dad. I should have been watching,” Bri says.

  “No worries. No harm, no foul,” I respond. “But keep a watch next time. I’m not all that interested in exploring the glide characteristics of this beast.”

  “I will, Dad,” Bri says. I nod, both as acknowledgement and assurance that all is good.

  We weren’t far from getting a closer look at the streets of Twin Falls. We would have been able to restart the engines without too much difficulty but having all of your engines quit has to rank up there with having your head sewn to a carpet. It’s just the idea of flying along without the propellers turning for that length of time that raises the pucker factor by a degree or two. However, we didn’t so it’s easily forgotten. Well, maybe not as I know that my eyes will now track to the panel each time we switch tanks.

  I cover various emergencies with Robert and Craig. The mountains of the Continental Divide enter our field of view along with Salt Lake City a short time later. Small plumes of smoke are still rising from the city but they are brownish in nature indicting yet more smoldering fires. There aren’t many and they aren’t large. We pass the large city and enter the tan of the desert proper after crossing over a small range of mountains. We are over half way through the flight and I begin to see the tops of building cumulus clouds to the southeast directly in our line of flight. That doesn’t bode well, I think wrapping up another emergency procedure. McCafferty makes way for Gonzalez at the flight engineer station.

  I point out the rising clouds in the distance; their tops and sides reflecting white from the sun. Lower down, they turn into an ugly boiling mess of dark blue-gray and black as more of the line of building thunderstorms becomes visible. Although I can’t see his knuckles, I do notice Robert’s grip on the st
eering column grow tighter.

  “Are we going through those?” He asks. “Or around?”

  “I’d rather not and I don’t think we’ll be able to go around,” I answer watching the squall line build quickly to the northeast directly across our flight path. “They look like they are sitting right over Clovis.”

  “What should we do then?” He asks.

  “I don’t know. You’re the pilot in command. You tell me,” I answer.

  “We should divert then,” he says. It comes out as both a statement and a question.

  “Whatever you say,” I reply.

  “That would be my choice,” Craig chimes in. I can tell he is holding off saying anything letting Robert arrive at his own conclusion and recognizes my wanting Robert to learn to take command.

  Robert holds up the map he has sitting on the console. He looks up and compares the map with what he sees outside. After a moment he says, “It looks like Kirtland AFB is still in the clear. We’ll land there.” There was no question with that statement.

  I hold back a nod or statement of correctness. I want him to analyze and choose an action without having my acknowledgement — own the decision and proceed with it — so that he can get used to making decisions and acting on them. He has gained a tremendous amount of confidence, as has Bri, and they will gain more.

  The turbulence begins to increase as we draw closer to the towering line of clouds. They are still in the distance but their height is more than impressive. The thunderstorms in this area can reach 70,000 feet and beyond. If you haven’t seen these kinds of storms, you should add that to your bucket list. The power inherent within the boiling mass of clouds is impressive. The air and land below is cloaked in dark shadows with a light show streaking from the clouds to the ground.