shaped, piston-engined Bell, now the workhorse of most traffic control and police forces. “The charter was for a doc and an engineer in ExTex. They wanted to go out to an oasis, past Wafrah, where they had a CASEVAC - some poor sod mixed his leg up with the drill. Well, we were flying with the doors off’s usual ‘cause it was summer, about a hundred and twenty degrees, and dry and rotten for man and chopper as only the desert can be - worse’n our Outback by a long shot. But we’d been promised double charter and a bonus, so my old pal Forsyth volunteered me. It wasn’t a bad day as desert days go, Ed, though the winds were red-hot’n gusting’n playing tricks, you know, the normal: sudden eddies whipping the sand into dust clouds, the usual whirlwinds in the eddies. I was at around three hundred feet on the approach when we hit the dust cloud - the dust so fine you couldn’t see it. How it got through my goggles God only knows but one moment we were okay and the next coughing and spluttering and I had both eyes full and was as blind as an old Pegleg Pete.” “You’re kidding me!”
“No. It’s true, swear to God! Couldn’t see a bleeding thing, couldn’t open my eyes, and I’m the only pilot with two passengers aboard.” “Jesus, Scrag. Both eyes?”
“Both eyes and we swung all over the sky to hell until I got her more or less even and my heart back in me chest, The doc couldn’t get the dust out, and every time he tried or I tried we near turned belly-up - you know how twitchy the G2 is. They were as panicked as me and that didn’t help a bleeding bit. That’s when I figured the only chance we got was to set her down blind. You said you was shit-scared, well, when I got our skids on the sand there wasn’t a dribble left to come out, not even a dribble.”
“Jesus, Scrag, you got her down for real? Just like today but for real, both eyes full of dust? No shit?”
“I got ‘em to talk me down, just like I did to you - ‘least the doc did, the other poor sod’d fainted.” Scragger’s eyes had never left his landfall. “How’s she look to you?”
“No sweat.” Siri One was dead ahead, the landing pad esplanaded over the water. They could see the landing master and his obligatory fire crew standing by. The wind sock was half full and steady.
Normally Scragger would report into radar and begin their gradual descent. Instead he said, “We’ll stay high today, sport, a high-angle approach and let her settle in.”
“Why, Scrag?”
“Make a change.”
Vossi frowned but said nothing. He rescanned the dials, seeking something amiss. There was nothing. Except a slight strangeness about the old man. When they were in position high over the rig, Scragger clicked on the transmit: “Kish radar, HST, leaving one thousand for Siri One.” “Okay, HST. Report when ready for takeoff.”
“HST.”
They were set up for a steep-angle approach, normally used when high buildings or trees or pylons surrounded the point of touchdown. Scragger took off the exact amount of power. The chopper began to settle nicely, perfectly controlled. Nine hundred, eight seven six five … four… three … They both felt the vibration in the controls at the same time. “Jesus,” Vossi gasped, but Scragger had already put her nose down sharply and floored the collective lever. Immediately she began to go down very fast. Two hundred feet, one fifty, one, vibrations increasing. Vossi’s eyes leaped from dial to dial to landing point and back again. He was rigid in his seat, his mind shouting, Tail rotor’s gone or tail rotor gearbox…. The landing pad was rushing at them, the ground crew scattering in panic, passengers hanging on in sudden fright at the untoward steepness, Vossi holding on to the side of his seat to steady himself. Now the whole instrument panel was vibrating, the engine pitch different. Any second he expected them to lose the tail rotor completely and then they’d be lost. The altimeter read sixty feet… fifty … forty … thirty … twenty, and his hands reached to grab the controls to begin the flare but Scragger anticipated him by a fraction of a second, gave her full power and flared perfectly. For a second she seemed poised motionless three feet up, engines screaming, then she touched down hard but not too hard on the near edge of the circle, skidded forward, and came to rest six feet off center. “Fuck,” Scragger muttered.
“Jesus, Scrag.” Vossi was hardly able to talk. “That was perfect.” “Oh, no, no, it wasn’t. I’m off six feet.” With an effort Scragger unlocked his hands from the controls. “Shut her down, Ed, quick as you can!” Scragger opened his door and slid out fast, the airflow from the blades whipping him, and went back to the cabin door, opening it. “Stay where you are a moment,” he shouted over the dying scream of the jets, wet with relief that everyone was still belted in and no one hurt. Obediently they stayed put, two of them pasty gray. The four Japanese stared at him impassively. Cold bloody lot, he thought.
“Mon Dieu, Scrag,” Georges de Plessey called out. “What happened?” “Don’t know, think it’s the tail rotor - soon’s the rotors slow we c - ” “What the hell are you playing at, Vossi!” It was Ghafari, the Iranian landing manager, and he had shoved his face near the pilot’s window, taut with rage. “How dare you pull a practice engine out on this rig? I’ll report you for dangerous flying!”
Scragger whirled on him. “I was flying, not Capt’n Vossi!” Abruptly, Scragger’s enormous relief that he had got down safely, mixed with his long-standing detestation of this man snapped his temper. “Piss off, Ghafari, piss off, or I’ll thump you once and for all!” His fists bunched and he was ready. “PISS OFF!”
The others watched, appalled. Vossi blanched. Ghafari, bigger and heavier than Scragger, hesitated then shook his fist in Scragger’s face, cursing him in Farsi, then shouted in English, wanting to provoke him: “Foreign pig! How dare you swear at me, threaten me? I’ll have you grounded for dangerous flying and thrown out of Iran. You dogs think you own our skies …” Scragger lunged forward but Vossi was suddenly between them and he blocked the lunge with his great chest. “Well, what you know, old buddy?Hey, sorry, Scrag, “he said easily, “but we’d better look at the tail rotor. Scrag, Scrag, old buddy, the tail rotor, huh?”
It took a few seconds for Scragger’s eyes to clear. His heart was pumping and he saw them all staring at him. With a great effort he fought down his rage. “You’re… you’re right, Ed. Yes.” Then he turned on Ghafari. “We had a… we had an emergency.” Ghafari began to scoff and Scragger’s rage soared but this time he controlled it.
They went aft. Many of the oil riggers, European and Iranian, were crowding around. The tail rotor stopped. About four inches were missing from one blade, the break jagged. When Vossi tried the main bearing, it was completely loose - the enormous torque caused by the imbalance of the blades had wrecked it. Behind him one of the passengers went to the side of the rig and was violently sick.
“Jesus,” Vossi muttered, “I could break it off with two fingers.” Ghafari broke the silence with his bluster. “Clearly bad servicing, endangering the li - ”
“Shut up, Ghafari,” de Plessey said angrily. “Merde, we are all alive and we owe our lives to Captain Scragger. No one could forecast this, S-G’s standards are the highest in Iran.”
“It will be reported, Mr. de Plessey, an - ”
“Yes, please do that and remember that I will be commending him for his airmanship.” De Plessey was imposing in his rage. He loathed Ghafari, considering him a rabble-rouser, openly pro-Khomeini one moment, inciting the workers to strike - provided there were no pro-Shah military or police nearby - the next fawningly pro-Shah and punishing the riggers for a minor infraction. Foreign pig, eh? “Remember, too, this is a French-Iranian coventure and France is not, how shall I put it, France has not been unfriendly to Iran in her hour of need.”
“Then you should insist Siri be serviced only by Frenchmen and not by old men! I will report this incident at once.” Ghafari walked off. Before Scragger could say or do anything, de Plessey put his hands on his shoulders and kissed him on both cheeks and shook his hand with equal warmth. “Thank you, mon cher ami!” There were loud cheers from the French as they congratulated themselves and crowded Scragger, formally embracing him. Then Kasigi stepped forward. “Domo,” he said formally, and to Scragger’s further acute embarrassment, the four Japanese bowed to him in unison to more French cheers and much backslapping.
“Thank you, Captain,” Kasigi said formally. “Yes, we understand and thank you.” He smiled and offered his card with both hands and another little bow. “Yoshi Kasigi, Toda Shipping Industries. Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a bad one, Mr. er, Mr. Kasigee,” Scragger said, trying to get over his embarrassment - over his rage now and back in control though he promised himself that one day soon he’d get Ghafari alone ashore. “We’ve, er, we’ve flotation gear, we’d plenty of space and we could have put her down in the water. It’s our job, our job to get her down safely. Ed here.” He beamed at Vossi genially, knowing that by getting in the way the young man had saved him from a matting he would not have won. “Captain Vossi would’ve done the same. Easy. It wasn’t a bad one - I just wanted to save you getting wet though the water’s nice and warm but you never know about Jaws….”
The tension broke and they all laughed, albeit a little nervously, for most of the Gulf and the mouths of the rivers that fed it were shark-infested. The warm waters and the abundance of food waste and untreated sewage that the Gulf nations poured into it for millennia encouraged fish of all kinds. Particularly sharks. And because all
