Disclaimer: I do not own planes, this chapter was betaed by Theolaterose99, and any mistakes are mine and mine alone. Also, this chapter, like many before it contains whumping.
Chapter 7- With Baited Breath
The moment that Cabbie went slack on his wheels was the moment various fire fighting apparatus and equipment surrounding him panicked.
"Cabbie! Coronel, don't you dare pass out on me! Cabbie!" Every single one of Pickles' flaps where up and bristling as he tried to nudge his friend and former CO awake. Around him Cabbie's little dirt beasties were practically vibrating with pent up emotion.
"What in the slag is going on?!" The T-6 Texan might have been significantly small than any other aircraft on the tarmac, but there was no doubt the Air Boss was in charge. When his voice snapped across the crowd everyone else shut up.
There was a long pause before anyone dared to breathe let alone move, then Dynamite wasted no more time and was quickly nose to nose with the Texan giving a brief.
"Go rouse the Red Cross tugs out of their bunks and get them on the problem." The Air Boss barked.
"It was you Red Cross idiots that got us into this mess." Pinecone's engine purred dangerously as she spoke. Avalanche's treads were directly next to hers creating an intimidating barrier of pissed off Smokejumper. "Why should we trust them now?"
"Your choices are kind of limited." A pickup truck from Logistics rumbled quietly.
"Esto es loco!" Blackout spat. "Are any of them certified to actually work aircraft engines?"
"No, but…" The pickup admitted.
"It is not like we have that many options for emergency medical personal." The Texan tried to put this argument to bed.
"CalFire." Pickles interjected.
"What?" Several apparatus looked at Pickles in confusion.
"CalFire is running the relief station, correct?" Several vehicles nodded yes at the C-130's question. "I am betting with their cross training at least one of their Rehab Units has more experience with aircraft engines than all the Red Cross tugs on based combined."
"Yes, but they are only supposed to do medical on their own vehicles." Another member of Logistics tried to explain. "The Red Cross is in charge of general medical issues. It is the way we set up the incident command…"
"I don't give a Guppy's Aft about how you set up your Incident Command Structure for this incident!" Pickles hissed. "Not when following it to the letter is causing a good plane to suffer."
"Enough!" The Air Boss glared up at the C-130, who glared right back down at him. "We will talk to CalFire and see if they have someone willing to give technical assistance, but in the mean time we are not throwing the chain of command out the window…"
Then Cabbie stopped breathing all together and all bets were off.
Every member of the Piston Peak Attack Team was incredibly loud in their own way. Avalanche was the most obvious; the kid's volume control was permanently cranked on rock concert. For Patch, Maru, and Dynamite it was the fact they had stereos that could be turned up loud enough to drown out Avalanche. At the moment Maru was experiencing one of the few things to challenge the volume of one of Patch's rock ballads when the ground pounders had rubbed her wrong.
The thunder of Windlifter's blades cutting through a still stormy sky was deafening. Mounted under the great helicopter's belly Maru suspected that the only reason the either vehicle could communicate was the fact that both of them were mounted with internal mikes.
"Give me a pass of the crash site."
Windlifter didn't bother replying, he just moved to make a slow pass of Dusty's crash trajectory. It looked bad, but Maru had seen worse. It was true that the aircraft hadn't survived those particularly bad crashes, but the mechanic decided to not dwell on that fact.
The sky crane then suspended Maru over their downed trainee SEAT. They were too far up to see too much detail, but the tug checked his desire to get closer. The helicopter knew his limits and would get Maru as close as he dared given the choppy turbulence. Even given the distance, the mechanic was able to pick up some hopeful signs. It looked like Dusty was mostly in one piece. It also looked like he had tried to move at some point, which meant that he had at least survived the initial impact. Satisfied that he wasn't going to get any more information about Dusty from a visual inspection, Maru gave his next order.
"Okay, let's take a look at Chief."
Windlifter turned, banking towards the nearby cliff and the bright red helicopter sheltering among its ledges.
When a car stopped breathing it was a problem, when an airplane stopped breathing it was an emergency on a completely different level. An aircraft could survive a lot, but loss of air circulation was not one of them. Often times you only had minutes to correct the problem before you faced fatal consequences. This was particularly true for a C-119 who didn't have a secondary cooling system.
Faced with a life and death emergency, many of the vehicles on the tarmac froze. While many of the vehicles were great a thinking on their tires in an emergency, when faced with something completely outside of their training they struggled to make traction. Then out of a crowd, a Rehab Apparatus wearing CalFire insignia pushed himself through and started to examine Cabbie's wings.
"Get me a welding torch." The Rehab unit informed one of the Red Cross kids that was staring up at him. When the tug didn't move fast enough the larger vehicle brought his engine up to a roar. "If you want to save him get me a welding torch now!"
"What is wrong with him?" Someone from the crowd asked nervously.
"You, with the saw." The apparatus pointed his antenna towards Blackout.
"Yes you, is that blade rated for metal?" Blackout nodded, and found himself being motioned over.
"Have you ever done emergency surgery before?" Blackout shook his canopy vigorously in the negative.
"Hopefully this will be your only experience then. I need you to cut here, here, here." The apparatus made marks on Cabbie's skin with his antenna, Blackout did his very best to follow the instructions exactly. He was shaking by the time the last cut was made, but he didn't have time to dwell on that. "Now go make identical cuts on the other wing."
Maru was afraid of heights. It wasn't something he liked to admit, and there was several members of the base (aka smokejumpers) who the mechanic really hoped never found out about said fear. Most of the time Maru did a really good job of hiding his discomfort, but Blade had known the tug long enough to pick up on the slight signs of stress caused by having to do emergency repairs on the edge of a cliff.
"You know you didn't need to come out here."
"You are still losing fluids." Maru didn't even bother looking up as he rummaged through his tool bag.
"It's a slow leak." Blade muttered under his breath.
"After what you have just been through any leak is a concern. Under normal situations the prop strike damage alone would have equaled an entire engine teardown, then there is the damage to your hydraulics…" Maru cut his rant short when he noticed that Blade's eyes were drifting closed. The mechanic gave the helicopter a good thawp with his wrench to get his attention. "And you are not even listening to me."
"What?" Blade didn't even pretend that he had been tracking as he yawned.
"Seriously, are you trying to kill yourself? Don't answer, drink this instead." Maru nudged a straw towards the Chief's mouth. "Really, after getting severe burns you think would be able to jump back to into being the hero." The mechanic sighed. "Chrysler, sometimes it feels like the entire slagging team has a death wish."
"Kind of in the job description."
"Ut ceteri vivere possint." Maru pulled out of Blade's hatch for a moment and looked out across the line of damaged trees that marked Dusty's crash site. "That others might live…sometimes I wish that you guys had some sense of preservation instinct left."
"Does he even have a chance?" Blade followed the tug's gaze.
"Hard to say." Maru threw himself back into his work. "Catastrophic failure of the engine due to loss of the gear box is so incredibly rare in small fixed wings. I know that in planes the condition isn't instantly fatal like it would be in a chopper, but I also know that unless I can get it fixed Dusty will never fly again. For a plane that may be cursing him to a fate worse than death. When the rumblers down there finally get him out of the trees I will be looking at a rebuild so significant that I almost don't know where to start."
"Almost?" Blade
"Well I am a mechanic aren't I?" Maru gave a mournful smile. "Plus, small prop planes are actually some of the most robust aircraft out there and Dusty here was built to bush a plane spec which is the only reason there is a chance that we may be able to save him." Maru shrugged as he dug his tines deeper into Blades side trying to feel around for the wet patch that would identify the leak. "We got lucky boss. If he was a helicopter or even a heavy that impact would have killed him instantly."
Blade scanned the burnt park landscape and tried not to wince when Maru brushed against still tender areas of his inner workings. "Right now I don't feel like we have been lucky."
"That is because you are a slagging idiot." Maru said as he clamped down hard enough that Blade yelped and almost jumped. This earned him a glare from his mechanic. "Well, I have found the leak and if you want me to fix it you better hold still."
Blade knew better than to ask for pain medication. Instead the helicopter settled on his wheels, squeezed his eyes shut, and chewed on his lip as he allowed his trusted friend to patch his innards.
Cabbie gave long whistling breath, and several of the surrounding fire apparatuses let go of air that they didn't realize that been holding. A few more cuts with the blow torch later and the old plane could once again breathe through both wings.
"WHAT JUST HAPPENED?" Avalanche broke the science.
"A procedure for the textbooks, boys." CalFire Rehab apparatus sighed, settling lower on his tires. When he got nothing but blank stares from the crowd the vehicle elaborated. "Basically when our friend here had his filters removed he started breathing in a large quality of fly ash, and then when the storm came here he also breathed in a boat load of water. While both of those things would cause a plane to be uncomfortable, especially one which is a much as an air breather as a C-119, neither should cause fault issues…"
"BUT TOGETHER…" Avalanche voice trailed off as the full realization of what had just happened dawned on him. The dozer's eyes flicked between the mechanic and the still unconscious jump plane.
"What?!" Dynamite tried to coax an answer out of her team's heaviest member.
"Cabbie's intake system was getting filled up by cement!" Drip stared up at their ride in horror.
"How is that even possible?" Pickles practically growled.
"When exposed to water, fly ash solidifies into a proto-cement. Cemented filters is something that I expect to see in road crews and ground pounders, in fact their intake systems are specifically designed help prevent this type of damage. This is why I expected some of your heavy equipment was familiar with the condition." The apparatus nodded toward Drip and Avalanche. "This type of thing is incredibly rare in aircraft because they are usually flying above all the gunk. That said, I have seen it twice in helicopters and I have read reports of it happening in fixed wings around volcanoes, but never something like this. This was an act of extreme negligence."
Everyone was silent as the vehicles words sunk in. The whole crowd was upset, but those that knew the old warplane were feeling particularly sick knowing that Cabbie had nearly just suffocated in front of them. Instinctively the ground team rolled up snug against their jump plane, craving the contact and needing to feel the C-119's shaky breaths.
"What do we do now?" Drip asked from where he had tucked himself next to Cabbie's nose. The apparatus looked down at the little ground pounder and snorted.
"You are going to get your suspension repaired."
"Are you sure there isn't anything we can do to help?" Dynamite had to swallow hard to keep her voice from cracking.
"Get space in one of those hangers, and get on the horn. It is going to take me hours to take apart his intake system and chip out the cement. I want a set of filters on him by the time I finish, because I am not tearing his wings apart again because he has breathed some more ash in."
"I am on the replacement parts." Pickles interjected before anyone could speak. The cargo plane immediately started talking to the tower to arrange for flight clearances and was spinning up his engines. Though he was doing a good job of keeping his voice level, it was pretty clear that the C-130 was about ready to go and land on someone.
"PICKLES' PISSED." Avalanche did his best attempt at a whisper, which was still loud enough to cause hearing damage with prolonged exposure.
"I am right there with him." Dynamite gave Cabbie one last gentle bump before heading towards the end of the runway. "Let's go get a hanger cleared out."
Aerospace Note: Well, did you guess things correctly? If you didn't that is okay, the Smokejumpers didn't either. If you did, then it is a good sign that you are ready to take on some of the more unusual challenges that aviation may send your way. Well now that has been taken care of, I promised last week that I would cover special Airspace designations so that is what we are going to do. Hope the following helps your future writing.
Parachute Jump Area- Any area were parachute operations are occurring. They are usually designated areas on the map, but can be temporary set up in the case of parachuting for emergency response. There are technically no flight restrictions within a parachute jump area, but pilots should be extremely cautions flying through them as nothing ruins everyone's day like running into someone skydiving.
Temporary Flight Restriction- Whether you are working on a forest fire, mapping a natural disaster, or participating in an air race, you really don't want extra aircraft flying around. In these cases a Temporary Flight Restriction or TFR is put in place. A TFR prevents all but authorized aircraft from entering a given area and has steep penalties for those that break the rules.
Restricted Airspace- An area of airspace that requires special clearance to enter. These may be test firing ranges, areas above hazardous materials, or military bases.
Prohibited Airspace- Area that can never be entered except in extreme emergencies. As an example, the White House is located in Prohibited Airspace.
Alert Area- A designation for an area that is being affected by heavy traffic. Used to notify aircraft that there is a higher than normal risk of collision and that they need to keep an extra eye out.
Military Operation Area- These areas are closed to nonmilitary aircraft as they are used as training areas of military aircraft. They are often called by their acronym MOA on aviation maps.
Controlled Firing Area- Where it be rocket heading to space or a military firing range, it is best to steer clear of these areas to avoid accidentally being shot out of the sky.