Tail of the Storm

Red Crown is the radio call sign of the U.S.S. Saratoga, an aircraft carrier steaming lazily with her task force in what the Navy must regard as more of a bathtub than a sea. We must try to establish contact with her before crossing into Saudi Arabia or risk a visit from her deck of fighters.

'MAC Alpha 5140, Red Crown, go ahead.'

'5140 is eastbound squawking 3612.'

After a short delay the seaman sitting in front of his console identifies us and clears into the heralded AOR.

'MAC Alpha 5140, you're sweet, sweet. Cleared to cross.'

I think that means radar contact/radar identified, but it's only a guess. I was never taught Navyese.

I train my binoculars on objects in the water but cannot pick out the Saratoga, only a few southeast-bound cargo ships and some oil platforms. Halfway across we contact Jeddah Control and are given our cleared route across the vast Arabian Peninsula. It is as we expected, thus there is no need to reprogram the waypoints in the navigation computer. We watch George, the autopilot, turn us southeastward as we cross the entry point over the seacoast settlement of Wejh.

The radio is extremely busy with air traffic coming into and out of the AOR. The Saudi controllers have thick accents, but English is the official language of international aviation, and though I become frustrated with them, I sense that they're doing their best to move us through. Bones and I listen closely to each transmission, sometimes glancing at one another with 'what'd he say?' expressions on our faces.

It seems asinine, this method of moving millions of dollars of equipment and hundreds of fragile lives around the sky on scratchy, hissing, word-of-mouth instructions. Bones, Jeff, and I banter over the absurdity of it all. Many times we have descended blindly into a valley, with gigantic rocks obscured by clouds all around. As it behooves us, we try to stay generally oriented, but we depend utterly on the radar controllers to keep us clear of both the rocks and the other planes flying as blind as we are.

It occurred to me that the business world would consider such an operation to be a very serious transaction, fraught with financial and personal liability. The controllers bark orders to move a $20 million piece of equipment and dozens of lives blindly and very swiftly through a murky sky filled with mountains and planes. So much is at stake and not least the careers of both those doing the ordering and those taking the orders. The lawyers would have a field day with this if they could somehow exert control over it. Managers, stockholders, and supervisors would insist on carefully constructed and executed contracts.

But what if the corporate world, dealing with millions of dollars and hundreds of lives and careers, conducted business as we do between cockpit and controller? It would be as simple as, say, a phone call from a construction company to the city zoning commission. Something like: 'Hello, this is Crashworthy Construction Company, we'd like to throw up a six-deck parking garage at the comer of Sixth Avenue and Eighteenth Street.'

'Roger, you're cleared to proceed. Call back when you're done.'

But the commission's telephone is on a party line. Other companies are trying to talk to the clerk all at the same time, and the lines are scratchy and hissy. The best the commission can do is record all the conversations, so that if the garage falls in and crushes a couple hundred cars, or if it was built in the wrong place, then blame can be established.

And what if we did business their way? We have the technology to fax documents quickly between ground and air. A computer could supply the basic language and would prompt the pilot and controller for the variables. We would make instant contracts, spelling out the duties and responsibilities of both controller and pilot. Each would sign and fax to the other. There could be no room for 'Micalaahfiifeunforsero. . cleeriadBraffofiffate, mintintreetreeseeroreeprtMidiinah.'

I glance at Bones, but he's shaking his head. I look back at Jeff in the jump seat. 'Don't ask me,' he shrugs, answering the unasked question.

We may be just around the corner from data link air traffic control. No human voices will be heard. Only a message will print out saying:

'MAC Alpha 5140, cleared Bravo 58, maintain FL 330, report Medinah.'

In this case I think I would welcome such an innovation. But then it'll only be a matter of time before the controller pushes a button and my airplane responds while I sit and watch. Of course I will have emergency override authority, but if I use it, I will have to defend such brazen action in a court of inquiry.

The landscape below keeps me pinned to the window, binoculars at the ready. The geology excites me. We cross great fault block mountain ranges and sail over the sinuous patterns of breached, plunging anticlines and synclinesthe long parallel ridges produced by the warping and eroding of layered rocks. Dry though it is, water has played a tremendous role in shaping the Arabian landscape. Countless dry streambeds claw at the uplands, gradually tearing them down into vast alluvial fans. I'm bewildered by the sight of small settlements here and there in the parched valleys. How do the people survive? Bones, who is also schooled in geology, suggests that maybe they have herds that feed on grasses we're too high to see.

Being infidels, we are forbidden to overfly the holy city of Medinah and are routed slightly north. Then we are told to contact Riyadh Control and proceed eastward over Bir-Darb, down Route Blue 58 over the central plateau.

The landscape now is predominately of volcanic origin. Hundreds of black cinder cones dot the yellow desert. Vast fields of hardened, hummocky brown lava testify to a cataclysmic history. I venture a guess that it wasn't too long an interval, geologically, between when the cones last spewed their clouds of molten ejecta and when the first Bedouins herded their animals, as they do still.

Farther, past Riyadh, the mottled lava gives way to immense swarms of dunes. These are Barchan dunes, which seemingly marchand in a geological sense, do exactly thatacross the bleak landscape, their characteristic crescent shapes testifying to the prevailing wind direction.

'There, Bones!' A large circular feature. Three, four, five miles across, maybe. It's hard to tell. It's badly eroded and barely discernible. Possibly it's a huge meteor crater.

The jet ahead of us receives his descent clearance; soon we'll be next. We contact the airlift control element, or ALCE, and pass along our load data and estimated landing time. Jeff gets fresh weather from a met station in Riyadh and gives it to Brian, who falls to the task of calculating landing performance data. Brian then hands the data cards up to us, and I brief the crew on our planned approach to runway 34 right. Afterward I call for the ritual.

'Let us now read from the Book of Lockheed.'

Brian knows this is his cue to start the descent checklist, the seventh of twelve such rituals we perform from the time we strap on the jet until we leave it. Bones and I respond dutifully after each challenge.

'ALTIMETERS.'

'Set, pilot.'

'Set, copilot.'

'RADAR.'

'On and tuned.'

'CREW BRIEFING.'

'Completed.'

'RADAR ALTIMETER.'

'On and set.'

'THRUST REVERSER LIMITER.'

'Set.'

'CONTINUOUS IGNITION.'

'On.'

'SEAT BELTS AND SHOULDER HARNESSES.'

'Adjusted, pilot.'

'Adjusted, copilot.'

'I'm pleased to announce that the descent checklist is complete.'

I buckle my shoulder harness and adjust the seat. You've got to get the seat to the exact vertical position you're used to. Just a notch or two higher or lower and you could grossly misjudge your height above the runway during landing.

The '141 has a long body, one that sits low to the ground. It was designed this way so that cargo and