Chapter 74
Driscoll was in a pitched battle with the controls. He had slowed the aircraft to configure for landing, deploying the skis and lowering the flaps, and at the lower speed the aircraft reacted more sluggishly to his inputs.
After performing the landing checklist, Driscoll said, “Give me the lights at three hundred feet.”
“That’s pretty low, boss.”
“It’s one of the few things we can do to keep people from shooting at us.”
He was glad they’d at least been told that an enemy force was in the area. It negated any thought of another low pass to inspect the surface and left them with a simple go/no-go decision. And here they were. The quicker they landed, the quicker they could leave.
Driscoll had ordered every navigation and strobe light be turned off, “going black” for their final approach.
He could barely make out the surface below in the ambient light, and his primary focus was on his instruments—Harrison had programmed both lateral and vertical paths from the threshold, and as long as Driscoll stayed on them, they would be in the ballpark.
They would turn on the landing lights one minute from touchdown, and from there Driscoll would transition to outside references.
The plan had sounded solid when he and Harrison briefed it minutes earlier. Now, poised above the Arctic icecap in a sixty-ton behemoth, battling a sporadic blizzard, it felt suicidal.
“Five hundred feet,” Harrison called out.
Both pilots kept glancing out the side windows, their senses on high alert.
At 300 feet, Harrison flicked on the landing lights. Again the LEDs shone with a solar intensity. The sudden illumination had a startle effect, the ice seeming to rush at them. Driscoll held steady.
Harrison suddenly saw flickers of light in the distance on the right. “We’re taking fire!” he said.
Driscoll didn’t respond. Either he’d been expecting it, or he was so engrossed in fighting the flight controls he couldn’t process the news.
A sound like a hammer hitting a block of wood rang out.
Harrison looked over his shoulder and saw a shattered side window.
He didn’t even mention it to his aircraft commander, who had his hands full.
The Hercules skimmed in over the red threshold lights and touched down firmly—this was intentional to give the skis solid footing, as well as to dissipate energy. The aircraft began to slow, passing through 100 knots.
At that point they were along for the ride. Harrison watched in horror out the spiderwebbed side window as the small-arms fire became a nearly continuous flicker. Driscoll could change nothing in the situation as he tried to wrestle the skidding giant to a stop.
Neither man had ever felt so helpless. Finally, the Hercules came to a halt.
“Parking brake is set,” Driscoll called immediately over the intercom to Carruthers. “We’re taking fire—open that door and get our exfils on board!”
The loadmaster rushed to the side entry door and flung it open.
He looked out into the gloom, and the first thing he saw was a sea of distant muzzle flashes.
Then a flashlight beam, much closer, caught his eye.
He discerned a half dozen shapes moving closer.
He hadn’t been given any prearranged signal for the recognition of friendlies, but the fact that this group was the right size and not shooting at them filled all his squares.
He waved them closer, and was about to head down to the ice to act as escort when a bright flash in the distance cut through the mist. It was quickly followed by two more flashes. Carruthers realized instantly what it was.
He dove headlong back into the cargo bay.