There I was at thirty six thousand feet over central Iraq, mach 0.84, and we're dropping scrabble letters faster than Paris Hilton's panties. It's a typical September evening in the Persian Gulf -- hotter than a hot thing and I'm sweating, so I turn down the flightdeck temperature.
But that's neither here nor there. The night is moonless over Baghdad tonight, but I don't really care, I have a seven letter word to put down, which the Captain challenges. But it's 2004, folks, and I'm sporting the latest in night flying technology. Namely, the "Official Scrabble Dictionary".
Additionally, my 19something-ish passenger jet is equipped with an obsolete, yet, semi-effective missile warning system, more commonly known as EYES. The EYES conveniently avoid looking out the window, as ignorance is bliss. Who says you can't polish a turd?
At any rate, apparently Baghdad International is illuminated. Those floodlights are the cat's ass. But I've digressed.
The preferred method of approach tonight is the random long finals. This is in no way a tactical maneuver, more a lack of co-ordination, and allows the pilot to ingress the landing zone in an unpredictable manner, instead of exploiting the auto pilot on an auto-coupled approach. Personally, I wouldn't bother my tanned, yet slightly hairy ass manually flying, but the ILS is on maintenance, which is the only reason we manually fly.
We get a visual on the runway, and at three miles long it's hard to miss. Now the banter starts. It's pilot appreciation time as I descend the mighty beast to 5000 feet and smoothly, yet very deliberately, input a twenty-degree left bank into the auto pilot, turning the aircraft ninety degrees offset from runway heading. As soon as we roll out of the turn, I reverse turn to the right a full two hundred seventy degrees in order to try and dislodge a peanut from the throttle quadrant. Some aeronautical genius coined this
maneuver " Dislodging a Peanut From The Throttle Quadrant." Letting the Thrust management do it's thing during the turn, I input a slight climb into the auto pilot, just to the point we get roughly on glide, and for some reason (presumably due to the sheer weight of them) my nether regions sag.
"Flaps?, Landing Gear Down?, Before Landing Checklist?" the Captain asks. "Go on then" I reply as I look over at the captain and he's shaking like a cat ****ting on a sheet of ice. No vowels, and he's 70 points behind.Looking further back for the navigator, and even without the NVGs, I can clearly see we don't have one. Finally, I glance at my cross-eyed flight engineer. His monstrous eyebrows rise in unison as a grin forms on his face. I can tell he's thinking the same thing I am. Nothing at all.
"Where do we find such fine young men?" "TEA WHITE ONE" barks the shaking captain. Now it's all aimpoint and airspeed. Tea drinking 101, with the exception that it's a paper cup, I'm drinking coffee, it's not Baghdad, and now lime scale is starting to crisscross the bottom of my cup.
Naturally, and not at all surprisingly, I forget to flare, and compress everyones spine, but I am somewhere on runway 33 left. Bringing the throttles to ground idle and then force the (props? not last time I checked) to full reverse. Tonight, the sound of freedom is my two big jet engines at max reverse, and the third at forward idle due to a tech problem. The quite big, coupla hundred ton, lumbering whisper pig comes to a lurching stop with less than four thousand feet to run. Let's see how long for the brakes to cool down now! We exit the runway to a welcoming committee of government issued Army grunts, and a collection of movers. It's time to let somebody download their beans and bullets and drive stairs into the wing, while I look for duty free cigarettes, and of course, urinate in one of the 6ish toilets we have on board.
Walking to the crew entry steps with my lowest-bidder, American Express, strapped smartly to my side, I look around and thank God,Allah, and anyone else who will listen I didn't step out.The movers had brought the wrong steps to the Jet, and it's a heady 6 foot drop to them. Then I ask God why I'm in the military.
Knowing once again I've spilled coffee and curry down my front, I ask myself, "What in the hell am I doing in this mess?" Is it Duty, Honor, and Country? Nope, it's turbulence, and the afore-mentioned lack of co-ordination. Or could it possibly be for the glory, the swag, and not to mention, chicken tikka for breakfast. There's probably some truth there too. But now is not the time to derive the complexities of the superior, cerebral properties of the human portion of the aviator-eating-machine model. It is however, time to get out of this ****-hole. The captain calls "Hey copilot clean yourself up! And how's 'bout the 'Before Starting Engines
Checklist."
God, he loves this job!