Chapter 7 - Into the Whiteout
The flight across Sector Four was ninety minutes of pure, physical violence.
The turbulence hit the C-130 like an iron sledgehammer, dropping the heavy aircraft fifty feet at a time before thermal updrafts slammed us back upward into the black clouds.
Inside the cockpit, the amber instruments flickered as ice built up along the leading edges of the wings.
"De-icing systems at maximum capacity!" Major Harris called out, his hands tight on his controls. "Radar visibility is down to zero! We are operating entirely on terrain-following sensors!"
"Keep her at eight thousand feet until we clear the coastal mountain ridge," I commanded smoothly, my eyes scanning the synthetic vision display on my center console.
On the screen, a three-dimensional wireframe render of the Aleutian ridge line appeared in sharp green lines—a jagged, terrifying landscape of sheer peaks and narrow ice canyons.
At the center of the wireframe, a small, blinking red emergency beacon appeared.
"Beacon acquired," Harris reported. "That's Captain Cole's signal. They are on the northern shelf of Mount Barrett. Altitude seven thousand two hundred feet."
"I have the shelf," I said, adjusting the engine trim to compensate for a forty-knot crosswind. "Initiating landing sequence."
"Lauren!" Harris shouted, turning his head toward me in shock. "The wind shear is gusting to sixty-five knots! We can't dump speed without stalling the airframe!"
"If we don't land now, those men freeze to death in forty minutes, Major," I said, my voice dead calm. "Deploy reverse thrust pitch controls. Lower the ski-gear."
With a heavy, mechanical clunk beneath our feet, the heavy steel-reinforced skis extended beneath the aircraft's landing wheels.
The C-130 plunged down through the thick layer of grey clouds.
Suddenly, the world outside the cockpit glass turned into an absolute, blinding wall of pure white.
No sky. No ground. No horizon.
Only driving, horizontal ice screaming across the glass at one hundred miles an hour.
"Two hundred feet!" Harris yelled over the roaring engines. "One hundred feet! I have no visual contact!"
"Trust the synthetic display," I said, my voice steady as stone. "Fifty feet. Forty. Holding slope angle."
I pulled back on the yoke, pitching the heavy nose of the C-130 upward just as a massive, dark white shadow rose out of the storm beneath us.
THUD-CRUNCH!
The heavy titanium skis slammed onto the uneven ice of the frozen mountain ridge with a force that rattled every rivet in the cockpit ceiling.
The aircraft bounced twenty feet into the air before slamming back down onto the snow, sliding violently sideways across the sixty-yard shelf toward a three-hundred-foot drop-off.
"REVERSE THRUST!" I roared, slamming the four throttle levers back into full reverse pitch.
The four turboprop engines screamed in agony, throwing two thousand horsepower of reverse air thrust against the roaring blizzard.
The C-130 slid forty yards... fifty yards... sixty yards... snow spraying thirty feet into the air around the windows...
And then, precisely fifteen feet from the sheer edge of the ice cliff, the heavy transport came to a complete, shuddering halt.
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"Ground stop," Harris gasped, his face drenched in sweat, his hands shaking violently as he rested his head against the control panel. "Dear God... we're alive."
"Get the rear cargo ramp down," I commanded instantly, unbuckling my flight harness. "Tell the medical team to move!"
