Walking up the GX’s steps, I turned around and blew Sarah a kiss. I’ve seen this in happen in the movies and thought it was contrived. But this was from the deepest part of my soul, and I saw it had hit her soul like a freight train.
I really had no choice leaving: two guys laid out with COVID and one with a broken leg meant that if I didn’t go, nobody would be available to do ground support on the deployed aircraft. If I didn’t go, they couldn’t proceed to wherever we were heading to.
The crews that I would be supporting were led by two very different people, Weasel (Sarah) and Dog (Pete), female vs male, USAF vs USN, but both equivalent of rank. Their nicknames spoke to their personalities too: when she spoke even issuing orders, Weasel spoke directly to your soul whereas Dog barked them out hard and fast. We had absolute trust in each other, and they needed me now.
Sarah and I wanted each other, but our waits could want, somewhat like what I had addressed before the wedding dinner with the finger wiggle on her hip.
From the off, we had so much in common. There is so much to love about her: her beauty manifested in body, spirit, intelligence, and our touch, I reminded myself tearfully, leaving her slammed me hard. But there were lots of people who had just been slammed hard. Comparably, our slam was an ant’s tiptoe, and my brain knew but was still processing this as I took my seat, belted up, and plugged my Surface into the power and WIFI.
The stairs were pulled up and the engines’ gearboxes engaged their fan to spool up for thrust.
Miss u, I messaged as we now had enough thrust to taxi, and we headed towards the taxiway.
Her reply: You are needed there. Counting down til we hold each other xxx. Her intelligence was ruling her heart. Even more to love about her, I knew. I had struck the big one and felt truly awful that I was leaving her alone and having to deal with The Pests who, with their badgering, had irritated us so much this week. I knew they would be bullying and pestering her to go to the hotel and be with the couples, but I felt that she would soon make the decision that was best for her, though maybe not them. We were apart, albeit for a week, but I knew it would feel like a year for both.
“VR,” called the pilot a few feet ahead of me. Our feet no longer were on the same ground and my tears poured out. Briefing, dinner, then sleep was my plan.
The Surface’s OMessage pinged. Wing was the caller, Annie was her name, but nobody called her that anymore and she was an EA: Executive Assistant which, like a lot of job titles and specs, bore little resemblance to either her work or import. She was really a planner, a facilitator, the glue that bonded my friends’ company. She was a mother figure in age and attitude to us and she liked power-plays to see whether someone new was feather duster or rooster. I had first met her when I was relatively young, but I’ve never been a duster and so I got her respect, so the power-plays were now to get a fun rise off me and she found playing with roosters fun and looked down on dusters.
We briefly chatted about The Match and how things had gone on the Honeymoon. I added her to my phone’s backup drive access list so she could see our photos and she made the aside response of “She’d like another dress,” which I completely missed but idly grunted in response, as my dinner was now served and I started eating as she proceeded with the briefing she’d compiled from the Planning and Logistics teams – the latter led by the fierce, ex-EA nicknamed 10B, or if you’d had a run in with her, That Bitch.
The first thing wasn’t a surprise: I wasn’t going to land at Charlotte but would land on the other coast at Mojave, in the desert east of LA. Mojave was like Hotel California if you were a plane: it was a desert storage boneyard where old or unwanted planes checked in and rarely checked out. It was also Little Shop of Horrors as an assortment of highly motivated small companies had facilities that built and maintained mostly one-off and highly experimental aircraft.
My ex-colleagues/friends had a facility there that served these weirdos. Some of the kit we would need was stored there, the rest would be flown down from Seattle. I would board that plane along with the kit we’d pick up at Mojave.
The first few days of a deploy can be rough: the Falcons’ kit includes tents, sleeping bags, and dried food in case the crew have nowhere to sleep, they can sleep under the wings or nearby and it has happened. The first tasks are to sort out a hotel and transportation – some of which 10B’s crew did remotely, but invariably, some not. One project I’d done, we’d got screwed over by the hotel that we’d booked for the week and ended up sleeping on the hangar floor, getting woken early by the Farting Falcon: a piston plane that misfired as it taxied past us daily.
The welcome news was that we had been given the Apella Project’s facilities in Patagonia, 300km from the quake zone. Apella was the local name for a stratospheric air current that blew during the summer. The Project sent up a manned aircraft to study this phenomenon and they were so high that even U-2 pilots looked up at them flying. But it was winter, and the project was dormant, the hangar vacant and likewise the hotel and car hire that they used had vacancies and they let us have it all.
The airfield was only 300m above sea level and its runway was very long. This was ideal as Apella, and her Heron tow-plane needed a long taxi to get airborne. The Falcons would be flying at near maximum weight, so the wings would need dense air to bite and the engines cold air to compress and heat.
At the end of the call, I asked Wing to put my breakfast, likely bedtimes, and my layover into Sarah’s OMessage to call her and let her know. Missing Sarah was one thing, not being in contact all week I knew would kill both of us. She said that she’d ask Weasel’s husband, David, to contact Sarah so she’d have someone with prior experience to bounce off.
My vows said we’d write the story together, but I had meant in person, together. This chapter would be written separately but entwined.
The briefing finished just as my dessert and second glass of wine did and I asked the Flight Attendant to douse the lights so I could sleep, but an empty sleep devoid of the pressure of Sarah on my shoulder or her comfortable chest to lay my head on. I hoped she would be asleep soon and, that in sorrow, she would dream of hope: the hopeful anticipation of our meeting at the end of the week. Tonight, this I what would dream of too.
I woke, knowing where I was and where I was going: the change in the noise of the turbofan engines behind had woken me from a deep and surprisingly sating slumber. Wing had messaged me saying she’d talked to, and comforted, Sarah and that she’d responded better than hoped. I knew that my love’s deep intellect was ruling her loving heart.
I landed in the middle of the night and rushed into the adjacent hangar, checking that everything was ready, and I had some spare time, so I grabbed a rather weedy tea and called my love. Our first chat apart was rushed and slightly edgy. She’d talked with Wing which had soothed her and had decided to go home instead of the hotel, which I was happy with as she was in a comfortable and familiar environment, and she had a plan to keep occupied. We both dearly missed each other, and we were avoiding expressing this, so I said, “I really value our chat,” and she replied, “We want, others need, this is our best for now,” which hit me hard at its depth of understanding.
I boarded the new plane with Gopher, and we headed for the enormous runway where the sadly now world’s largest aircraft resides, and we briefly saw her twin noses peeking out of her lair. As the wheels went up, my eyelids dropped, and I fell into a deep sleep. I knew that like a lot of things, this would be in short supply this week.
An hour out from landing, the cabin lights went up and so did we. A full breakfast of muesli, fruit, Full English, and croissants was produced along with OJ and coffee which we ate and we called Weasel who was on her inbound track having done a brief survey on her way down, so would land before us. Dog, in Falcon 2, had taken off later than Weasel and would land after us.
As we descended, I saw the stunning view of the Patagonias and the lake out of the window and snapped a few shots for Sarah. We came in straight, taxiing along the lakeside and straight onto the apron where we parked next to Falcon 1.
We got out and Gopher started preparing the unload as I went over and hugged Weasel. It was good to see her, but bad that I was here hugging my friend and not in the embrace of the lady I was starting to cherish and respect so much.
We identified our first task for tomorrow: there was a parking spot each for Apella and Heron, but only Apella’s had power and data, and they were too close to the hangar for the Falcons. We realised that parking there, the engines would suck out stuff from the hangar and FOD. We planned to get the splitter out of a kit we had brought down, run out two legs, and mark up the new spots, so the Falcons could get power, data, and an accurate GPS baseline.
A van with Hotel dos El Centro on it appeared. The driver got out and introduced himself as Jimmy and greeted us in perfect Spanish, then English. While his name was English, he explained that “was 100% local, albeit five generations away from Cardiff,” which explained things!
Apella’s crew hotel was near the airfield, and we were soon accommodated. The manager introduced herself to us, and I asked that they set out a buffet for early breakfast and late dinner so we could eat. She said that the chef was happy to work on our clock which made us all happy that we’d be getting fresh, hot food as some of the deploys we existed on either takeaways or nocturnal buffets.
As I got to bed, I called Sarah. I felt sad at seeing her on screen, not on my back, or front as was normal at this time, but I knew that people’s needs outweighed my want. We talked about our day, and I sent her a few shots of the airfield which she liked back. But we were still trying to avoid the magic MISS YOU. We closed by saying how much we valued the call.
The next morning was an early start. We assembled in the restaurant in the presence of the chef who said that he would cook what we wanted, and our lunch was ready. Breakfast is where we brief the day, then head out, Bring Up, Preflight, and then they fly off into the sunrise.
Today was different as they wanted to know about Sarah, so I told them how lucky I was to connect with her on an intellectual level first and that we’d later fallen asleep entwined on the patio, even the hard-shelled Dog thought that was sweet.
I felt sad as this was my first breakfast without my love, and I missed being able to offload or feed her. Weasel picked up on this and told me to get up. I stood up and the big sister hugged me as she always had as I am ten years younger than her. She whispered, “Weasel hug good, but not the Sarah-y hug you want?” I hugged her tight and thanked her, for a Weasel Hug is always good.