Ash - Part 2
"Take a seat, Doctor," Dalton ordered, as he did a final around the cockpit and his seatbelt. "With any luck the ash in front of us is just a narrow band and hasn't reached the airport itself yet. We'll punch right through it."
"Right, right," Andres nodded anxiously, heading back into the cargo bay. "Good luck."
Dalton didn't answer him, honing in on prop speeds and fluid temperatures. The ever-darkening sky loomed over them as the ash cloud approached like a rising wave. Turbulence became stronger. Lightning flashes began illuminating the interior of the plane. Andres clumsily buckled his seatbelt; his hands wouldn't stop shaking.
"Bicol Tower, Bicol Tower. This is Phoenix 10-5 of the United Nations International Rescue Organization. Do you copy, over?" Dalton hailed.
Static.
"Bicol Tower, Bicol Tower. This is Phoenix 10-5 of the United Nations International Rescue Organization. Is ash falling at your location, over?"
More static.
"Bicol Tower, if you can hear me we are currently inbound to your location. Have our science team ready for evac and as many civilians as you can. We are six miles south of the volcano’s crater descending through 2,000 feet heading due east. We'll be seeing you in less than ten minutes, over and out.
"Attzs," said Dalton.
"Yes, sir?"
"I'm going to shutdown the engines," he explained. "I'll leave the nacelles in their horizontal position and we'll glide straight through this cloud. If we leave them on the ash will heat up into a substance similar to molten glass inside of them and choke us. With the engines off it could just buy us enough time. We can clean them out when we land."
"Understood, sir," Attzs replied, confident in his superior’s plan.
"It's IFR from here on out, buddy," Dalton smiled, shutting down the engines. "Ready?"
Attzs looked at the aerial abyss one last time before they entered into it. The last of the glorious blue sky they had been surrounded by disappeared from his peripheral vision. He could see streaks of falling ash less than a mile ahead as he heard the engines rev down.
"Ready," he said confidently.
"Here we go, Doc!" Dalton shouted.
"Okay!" Andres shouted back, his voice cracking.
"I'm shutting down the cabin ventilation system," said Attzs, pressing a display icon.
"Good idea," Dalton nodded. "Mask on," he then ordered. "Damn stuff is so fine some of it is bound to get in."
"What about the doctor?" Attzs asked. "He doesn't have one."
"Better the people flying the aircraft having clean air than the passengers I hate to say. It will be quick, don't worry."
"This is nuts, you know that right?" Attzs laughed, putting on his mask.
"Yeah," Dalton laughed back, putting on his own mask. "I love my job."
Suddenly all light vanished outside of the cockpit. It was as if the plane’s windows had been painted black. The sound of small granules hitting the fuselage began. It was like they were being sand blasted. Alarms started blaring all across the controls.
"Ash sensors are going nuts!" Attzs said.
"But no engine alarms yet," noted Dalton. "That’s good."
"We're going to definitely need a new paint job though," Attzs chuckled.
The aircraft started to shake violently. A stroke of lightning struck the nose of the plane.
"Woah!" Attzs exclaimed.
"She can handle it," Dalton soothed. "We're four miles from the airport."
"Airspeed is dropping, sir," Attzs cautioned. "No, wait, it’s - "
"Don’t bother," Dalton said calmly. "We're still okay. I've been flying this aircraft for years, even before UNIRO. I know her," he said, tightly gripping the joystick between his legs.
"Altitude is 1,100 feet, sir."
"It's probably lower," Dalton said. "Ash is weighing us down. I can feel it in the controls."
"We gotta keep the nose up," Attzs said.
"Yep," Dalton nodded.
A large, smoking rock suddenly smashed into the window in front of Sergeant Dalton, shattering on impact. Glass whizzed past Daltons face, cutting him badly. Thick ash instantly filled the cockpit in a blinding haze.
"Sir!" Attzs screamed over more ensuing alarms, covering his face. He looked over at his pilot. He was still conscious. "Sir! Are you alright?"
"Yeah," Dalton moaned. He pointed to a screen that was flashing red. It was a stall alert.
"Crap," Attzs shuttered, barely able to see the screen in the blanketing volcanic filth that now shrouded the entire cabin. He could feel the aircraft start to dip forward.
Dalton reoriented himself and cleared his throat. He briefly removed his mask to spit up blood between his legs. "Oh no you don't," he muttered, putting the mask back on. "Pick your ass up! Come on!"
He pressed a button that began rotating the plane’s two-engine nacelles into their vertical positions.
"What are you doing, sir?" Attzs questioned.
"We're still inside the cloud so we can't restart the engines. At this rate we'll never make it. I'm going to autorotate the props to get us there. I've lost my HUD, Attzs. You'll have to guide me with yours!"
"Can the Osprey even do that, sir? I thought its rotor inertia was to slow?"
"Where is the airport?" Dalton asked, ignoring the question.
"Two degrees right," Attzs instructed, looking into his still intact heads up display. "We are a mile and a half away at 400 feet."
"Try 200 feet, Attzs," said Dalton, straining at the controls.
The black veil outside lifted as quickly as it came. Almost directly ahead was the long single runway of the Bicol International Airport. It was clear of falling ash but the eruption column was fanning out above them at 100,000 feet against the bottom of the stratosphere, casting a cold shadow across the land. It looked like a natural nuclear detonation. A thin line of blue sky was visible several dozen miles away along the leading edge of the blast.
"You were right, sir!" Attzs cheered.
"Yep, just a band of ash. Now we gotta land."
"We can restart the engines!"
"No!" Dalton yelled. "No, not yet. They're going to have ash stuffed inside of them. If we restart them now we'll ruin them."
"Uh, sir," Attzs pointed.
Dalton looked through the hole in the fuselage before him and saw that they were nearly skimming the tops of trees.
"Shit," he said. "Hang on!"
He tilted the plane’s nose even higher, so much so that the two men were pushed back into their seats. He fought the controls of the plummeting aircraft trying to get airflow up through the plane’s two enormous rotor props, forcing them to spin and create lift.
"Half mile!" Attzs yelled.
Something crashed into the bottom the plane with a loud thud, then something else. The Osprey's nose plowed through the top of a tall palm tree just before the clearing ahead of the airport’s runway. Both men screamed.
"Come on! Come oooooonn!" Dalton yelled.
"Landing gear down," said Attzs, flipping a switch. "Five hundred feet to go!"
The plane’s tail briefly impacted the ground before bouncing back into the air.
"This is going to suck!" Dalton yelled. "Brace! Brace! Brace!"
With one final pull on the joystick, Dalton slowed the plane down to nearly a complete aerial stop. The Phoenix lunged down hard rear first, snapping both back landing gear. Its belly tore through the top few inches of soil. Dalton and Attzs were thrust forward as the nose of the plane impacted the ground but their restraints held them painfully back. Neither had control at this point. Momentum kept them sliding a few dozen more feet right up to the concrete edge of the runway. They stopped in a cloud of dust and grass.
"Wow," Attzs moaned, feeling his body for any injures, "that did suck, sir."
"Not even my worst landing," Dalton chuckled as he released himself from his seat. "We gotta check the damage. See if we can even make it out of here."
"Right," Attzs agreed, unbuckling himself. "Where's Doctor Andres?"
"Doctor!" Dalton yelled, stumbling into the cargo bay. "You alright?"
Dalton saw Andres hunched over in his seat. Vomit was on the floor at his feet. He ran up to him and gently sat him up.
"Andres!" Dalton shouted. "Talk to me!"
Andres slowly came to. "What… What happened?" he asked Dalton, rubbing his head.
"We landed, that’s what happened," said Dalton. "Can you walk?"
"Yeah," Andres groaned. "Yeah… I think so."
"Good. I need you to go outside and tell me how screwed we are in terms of getting fried by that eruption. I'm counting on you to tell me when I need to take off. Do you understand?"
"Yeah," Andres nodded, slowly standing up. "I can do that."
"Good," Dalton smiled.
He moved to the back of the plane and opened its cargo bay door. He stepped down the ramp. Attzs quickly joined him. The two men looked up to see a towering wall of ash heading straight towards them. What was left of the mountain was collapsing in on itself, generating a pyroclastic surge. The ground subtly shook, gently rocking the downed Phoenix.
"Check the plane, Attzs," Dalton instructed, not taking his eyes off of the eruption. "We don't have much time."