Nick

The big helicopter pushed stubbornly through the snowy blackness, threading through valleys and down riverbeds looking for a route under the overcast.  The Captain on the controls felt as dark as the weather, utterly disgusted with life in its current configuration.  He'd spent last Christmas on the DMZ in Korea and had been sure this one would be different--peaceful, warm, and normal.  In fact, he’d promised it would be so to his wife.  As it was if everything worked out exactly as planned he should roll back in just in time to wake up his two boys on Christmas morning.  That, of course, presupposed that his wife would let him in the house.  Given her general outlook when he had departed, that was anything but certain.

The call had come a mere seven hours prior.  An Air Force radar station, part of the Defense Early Warning line up above the Arctic Circle, had experienced a failure and required some critical part if it was to keep on making sure the Russians weren't launching a Christmas Eve sneak attack.  Naturally no one else was available.  After the second phone call the Captain realized how stupid he sounded and gave up.  "Hi, Mrs. McDowell, this is Captain Cratchett.  I'm awfully sorry to bother you on Christmas Eve but is your husband terribly busy?  We need to fly a part up to a radar station and …well, never mind."  He would have been fully within his authority to order one of his pilots to take the trip but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.  That was one of the reasons his troops worshipped him so.  He grumpily resigned to flying the mission himself.

The young Captain scanned the upcoming terrain subconsciously through his night vision goggles, rocking the tremendous Chinook helicopter this way and that to follow the contours of the frozen river valley.  The aircraft blew through ever-intensifying snow showers that momentarily obscured the image in his goggles.  The pilot grew more and more morose with each passing moment.  He was closer to the station than he was to home and with the weather getting worse by the moment he would probably be safer pressing on than he would be trying to pick his way back to the airfield.  He began to realize that, if this blizzard kept up as it was heading, they might actually get weathered in and have to spend Christmas at the radar station while their families opened presents without them a cool one hundred seventy-five miles away.  His wife would never forgive him for this, not this time.  No job is worth this kind of…

"Hey, sir, we've got a problem back here," the voice burst over the intercom.  The Captain snapped back to the present as his hands tightened on the controls.

"What's up, Chris?"  he asked tensely, now completely focused on the terrain and his instrumentation.

"It looks like a tripped debris screen latch on the combining transmission.  It won't reset, boss.  Looks like this one's for real."

The tripped latch could mean one of two things.  Either the latch was bad and they would all be laughing about this tomorrow or the indicator was operating as advertised and the transmission was coming apart.  Cratchett felt a cold lump settle in his gut.  Without taking his eyes off his flight path the Captain addressed the Warrant Officer in the other seat with a certain edge, "Rus, man, I don't have any great ideas.  We can't keep flying with this."

"I know, sir," he responded.  "Try to find a clearing and I'll get the call off."

The Captain spotted a tiny opening in the snow-covered forest below and torqued the aircraft around into a tight orbit, judging the wind and the snow for an optimal approach.  The clearing was pitifully small but you have to take what's offered in the White Mountains of Alaska at night.  As he lined up for the approach he noted to himself that there was absolutely no sign of human habitation--no cabins, no trails, nothing.  His heart sank. 

"Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is Army copter 90166 on guard.  We are executing an emergency landing in the White Mountains vicinity…"  Rus paused while he spun the GPS receiver up to present position.  "Whiskey Golf niner seven three, four two niner."  He had opportunity to repeat the call one time before the aircraft descended below the level of the trees.

"Rus, you think anybody heard you?" the Captain asked.

"No sir, I don't.  Not out here," the other pilot responded honestly.

With a sense of resignation Cratchett added, "I don't think so either."

The landing was uneventful with Chris and Brian, the flight engineer and crew chief, talking the pilot through the last twenty feet or so, ensuring that the Chinook's massive rotor system cleared the trees all the way around.  As the crew shut the big turbine engines down the Captain noted with some slight glimmer of satisfaction that the weather seemed to clear slightly.  It was a small blessing, but a blessing nonetheless.

"Guys, go ahead and get into the rest of your snowman gear, get up top, and pull the debris screen," the Captain tossed back to the crewmembers after shutdown, both of whom were already struggling into their arctic clothing.  He looked at them seriously and said,  "Listen, guys.  Rumor has it you can build one of these helicopters out of Pez dispensers and band-aids.  Let's just make the airplane healthy, get this mission done, and go home.  We're counting on you two to get us out of here, alright?"

Chris and Brian smiled at the compliment and clambered out into the darkness.

After the two crewmen were outside Cratchett asked quietly, "Rus, what's the OAT?"

The Warrant Officer glanced up at the Outside Air Temperature gauge and whistled softly.  "It's minus forty two, boss."

"All right, Rus.  You know the deal.  This could get serious real fast.  Take the emergency transponder and your survival radio and find someplace high.  Set the locator off and then see if you can raise an airliner or something.  It's way too cold to bag here in the Boeing Hilton so I'm gonna go get started on a shelter.  Be careful and keep a close watch on your fingers and toes.  We could be here for a while."  With that the Captain shook his head, mostly to himself, grabbed his entrenching tool off of his rucksack, and stepped out into the darkness.

He had to go forty yards or so to the treeline to find a decent head-high snowbank.  The hurricane-force rotor wash from the descending helicopter had done an admirable job of stacking the snow up into the spruces.  The packed snow around the low-hanging spruce boughs should make an adequate snow cave.  As the moisture from his breath began to frost over his balaclava Cratchett realized that he could very easily spend Christmas out in this forsaken wasteland curled up with three smelly guys in a hole in the snow.  That was just great.  He was five minutes into the snowbank when the flight engineer's voice cut through the darkness from the top of the helicopter.

"Hey, sir," the sergeant called.  "Can you hear me?"

"Yeah, Chris, go ahead, what've you got, man?" he responded.

"We've got the screen pulled but it doesn't look too good.  There aren't any big metal chunks on it or anything; that's a good sign.  It could just be a bad screen, but out here there’s no way to run the diagnostics on the c-box to figure out if the transmission's eating itself or not.  If I could be sure the screen was bad, we'd be fine.  If the transmission's coming apart, though…well, main rotor stoppage in flight is one of those truly bad emergency procedures.  We really can't legally fly this beast again like this."

"I don't suppose we've got any way to proof the screen way out here, do we?" the captain asked hopefully, scrunching his eyes in the darkness to steel himself against the inevitable answer.

"No, sir, we don't," Chris answered.  "Without the spark-chaser gear back at the hangar there’s no way to test it out.  This is just a fluke.  Believe me, boss, I'd build you one if it were possible."

Cratchett muttered bitterly to himself.

"I know you would, Chris.  I appreciate your trying.  If there's not anything else you can do for the plane grab your entrenching tools and come give me a hand with the snow cave."

The Captain kept mumbling to himself, thinking some awfully vile thoughts about Alaska in the winter, Boeing engineers, the Army, and life in general.  At that he launched into the snowbank in earnest, venting some of his frustrations over the way his evening was unfolding.  He was interrupted a short moment later by a long howl and some ferocious snarling uncomfortably close by.  Even though he had been born and raised in Mississippi, it didn't take long to realize what was coming.

"Rus!”  he shouted, moving back toward the aircraft.  "Get back to the plane now.  Chris, Brian, stay where you are.  Wolves…and they're getting close!"         

The aurora was intensifying, casting everything in its peculiar, eerie green glow and providing just enough light to illuminate Chris and Brian pulling the Warrant Officer up bodily onto the top of the helicopter.  Cratchett struggled mightily back toward the aircraft but the snow where he was standing rose past his thighs and he wasn't making much headway.  His crewmates shouted to him to hurry but with terrifying speed the barking and snarling approaching behind him drowned them out.  Realizing that he would never make it back to the helicopter in time, the Captain turned and raised the only weapon he had, his entrenching tool, in as threatening a posture as he could manage.  He felt his breath catch in his throat as the lead wolf, a massive creature with thick flowing fur and fiery eyes, charged out of the spruces along with several others in line directly toward him.

Before the thundering animals got close enough for the Captain to swing, the lead animal slid to a stop, as did the seven identical beasts behind him, and the tremendous sled they were pulling braked as well.  The aurora ebbed for a moment and brightened again, softly illuminating an enormous man as he stepped heavily from the back of his over-laden sled and trudged through the snow to where Cratchett stood helpless and out of breath.

"Hey, son," the big man laughed heartily.  "You doin' a little prospectin' this evening?" he said, pointing to the e-tool still comically upraised above the terrified pilot’s head.

The man was indeed quite large, about six foot three by the pilot's guess, and he must have topped three hundred pounds.  He looked to be a typical bush-bred Alaskan—from his flowing fox fur hat to his Carhart coveralls patched with duct tape.  He exuded an oddly benign air, even under the current circumstances, and his words seemed to have a deep, warm quality through the steam of his breath.  Under the light of the dancing aurora his eyes glowed just a tiny bit green.

The Captain lowered his e-tool sheepishly and said,  "I'm sorry.  I’m Captain Mike Cratchett.  We heard your dogs coming and thought they were wolves," the relief palpable in his voice.

"Well, they are, actually," the big man returned with another friendly chortle.  "But I raised 'em from pups and they're pretty well-behaved."  He reached over and grabbed a handful of fur on the nearest muscular animal, giving it an affectionate shake.  "You boys doin' OK?"

"We've been better, honestly," the Captain replied.  "We've got a bad debris screen on the c-box and…," Cratchett realized his audience and checked himself.  "There's a problem with the aircraft and it needs some work to get flying again.  Until you showed up I was pretty sure we were going to become permanent fixtures."

"Well, so long as there ain’t nobody hurt I'm not sure I can help a whole lot," the big man said, lighting a rough wooden pipe with a big lifeboat match.  The flare from the match momentarily illuminated the big man's weather-beaten face as well as his full whiskers white with frost.  "I doubt you need any food and your gear is probably better'n mine.  When I get where I'm goin' I'll be happy to call the fort and let 'em know where you are, though.  I've got a GPS with me in the sled.  Man, I love that thing."

"On that subject, sir, if you'll pardon my asking, where are you heading anyway?" the confused officer asked.  "We didn't see any trails or anything coming in and we are definitely pretty close to the geographic middle of noplace.  I must admit that I’m surprised to see you here."

The big man rubbed the back of a mitten across his thick beard, taking away a liberal quantity of frost.  "Oh, I was just passing by when I heard your Mayday call," he replied with another chuckle.  He paused and began to puff his pipe in earnest, clearly savoring its warmth.  "I come through these parts pretty regular, especially this time of year.  I live pretty close by.  Right now I'm heading up towards Bettles, probably another fifty miles or so, and if the weather holds I should just make it in time."

Cratchett couldn't place it but this strange man seemed unnaturally comfortable to him, as though it was his grandfather packed away under all those clothes.  "I know this sounds unusual, sir, but you seem terribly familiar to me.  Have you ever lived anywhere else where we might have met?"

At this the big man laughed mightily,  "Nope, son.  Never even thought of it.  I've lived up here all my life; folks wouldn't have it any other way." 

The aurora brightened again and the big man took one last pull from his pipe before knocking its sparking residue out against the rail of his sled.

"Sorry I couldn't be any more help," the man said as he remounted his sled.  "I'd love to stay and chew the fat with you gentlemen but I'm runnin' a pretty tight schedule."

Before the Captain could object the big man was back on his runners and had his dogs, or whatever they were, up and straining against their harnesses.  In what seemed nearly an afterthought, the big man dug his huge mitten underneath the canvas tarp lashed tightly across the sled and retrieved a small package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.  He tossed the package in a lazy arc across his team to the Captain, who caught it clumsily in his own heavy arctic mittens.

"You boys be careful and keep warm, now," the man cautioned with a serious tone.  "It's a fearsome cold out here tonight."

He made a strange sound that Cratchett did not recognize and the team strained as one, forcing the heavy sled into motion.  "Merry Christmas, son," the big man said, smiling in the green light.  "Merry Christmas."

"Wait, how…" the Captain started.  But with surprising speed, the man was already gone.

Captain Cratchett stood silently in the snow and watched the man with his dogs disappear into the spruces.  When the last sounds of the team had withered into the cold forest he turned around, searching the faces of his crewmates.  They were clearly as perplexed as he.

As the Captain moved to walk back toward the aircraft he remembered the package and, sliding one gloved hand out of his mittens, carefully tore the paper away.  Holding the little box up so that the faint glow from the aurora illuminated it fully he could just make out the stenciled inscription, "Transmission Debris Screen, Combining, 1 ea, CH-47D Helicopter, NSN 4769-33-8524, Boeing Vertol Inc. Philadelphia, PA."