Setback - A Short Story

Setback – A Short Story

The oil pressure and temperature gages read normal as I glance over them before resting my eyes on the dials on my watch.  The time read at 3:30pm and the sun glowed brightly on the plane.  My name is John Hart.  I’m a 35-year-old Navy Seal helicopter pilot.  My brother and I are en-route to taking my fathers remains home to Colorado.  The radio light began to buzz as a message came over the comm.

Peter picked up the handset and spoke into it.  “Air Traffic Control this is Bell 628416, over.”

“CSIA Traffic Control.  We’ve got a severe storm moving in North by Northeast at about 8 kilometers per hour. Thunderclouds, an ice warning, and high turbulence. Suggest you divert course South by Southeast and come down to 3000 feet.  We can reroute you through New Mexico.”

“Not necessary, Control.  We’ll go up to 18,000ft and we should pass right over it.  If not, we can divert to due West and we should beat it past you.”  Peter responded.

“Inadvisable.”

“We’ll, make it. Bell 628416, out.”

He put down the headset and I looked at him.  “You’re doing it again.”

“I am not.”

Sometimes I don’t know what frustrates me more, knowing I’m right and he’s wrong, or him not admitting it.  “He’s already dead Peter.  It doesn’t matter if we’re a day late.  We should divert.”

“Why do you always, have to be right.  You fly your way and I’ll fly mine.”

As I looked out of the windshield, I could see—off in the far right—the storm clouds racing in like wild buffalo.  It was a solid wall of black, with flash-white color lightning discharges.  Though I felt the plane rise back as Peter pulled back on the stick, I knew we wouldn’t make it over the storm.

The front approached quickly, and in less than twenty seconds the plane began to shake from the turbulence.  “Coming up to 17,000.”  Peter remarked as if reading a newspaper.

Images began to flash before my brain, and just as suddenly I was back in the Gulf.  The chopper skidded left and right as the terrain following radar showed the obstacles in my path.  Anti-Aircraft fire was raining over me as the gunman tried to take range.  My finger hit the pickle button as my thumb held the trigger and I strafed the camouflaged desert hideout.  My unit showed up brightly on the infrared projection in my helmet as I layed down cover fire for them.  The chopper jumped up slightly as one of the rounds found it’s mark, and then it began falling rapidly.  “John.  John!”  My copilot said.

“John!”

“What.”

“We’ve hit a low pressure pocket.”  Peter yells as I feel my stomach drop out from beneath me.  “I’ve got a light on engine 2, it’s on fire.”

“In a hailstorm?”  I respond as I see the fist size pellets slam into the plane.  I try not to wince as one of them cracks the windshield.

The plane bucked as we hit a normal pressure again, but no sooner did that happen then the electrical system shorts out.  The auxiliary’s come one, but short out as well as the plane begins to nose over yet again.

“Give me the stick.”  I yell at my brother as we pass negative 45-degree angle.

“NO!  Fix the short.”

“Do you have a death wish?  Give me the stick.  I’ve got more experience in landing dead vehicles.”

“Exactly.  Trust me to fly John.  Fix the short.”

It really comes down to that, trust.  Every time I had trusted my brother before, when it really had counted, he had failed.  I had had to come in and get the job done.  How could I trust him in this situation, one where are lives and our father’s remains were at stake.  And yet somehow, I know I must.  Ripping off the circuit breaker cover I begin to cross-wire circuits, believing against all odds that somehow we could pull it off.  It took 15 seconds, I know that sounds little, but we fell the whole time as I worked and then connected the correct leads.

In an almost meditative state Peter glances at me before slowly pulling back on the lever, and the plane levels off at 6,000 feet, safe, under the storm.

“Thank you.”

“For what?”  I ask.

“You had, for the first time in our lives, enough faith to believe in me.   Even if it cost us our lives, you believed.  Dad, not even mom, ever gave me that, but you have and to me that means everything.”

I’m not sure what made the tears start dripping from my eyes, but for these moments I finally see my brother through his eyes.  “Thank you.  Thank you for never giving up, no matter how hard I rode you.  You believed in me, that I would change, and now I guess Dad’s last wish was fulfilled.  We are truly brothers, in mind and soul.  That makes us family.”