Airwolf – Terminal Velocity

Chapter One

Roger Dobbs took a moment to move his attention away from checking his instrument gauges to take in the spectacular view over Guy Anders' head and shoulders, which filled the front windshield.

The barren, rocky planes of the California desert was afire as the sun set over the distant hills, and as Anders executed a perfect barrel roll, Dobbs saw the curvature of the earth and the sharp contrast between daylight and night flash before him, before he was forced to return his attention to the instruments before him.

It was Friday evening, the end of his third week at Project Thunderbird, and between the exercise regime, various classes, simulator sessions and mandatory flight checks that filled his days, he hardly felt as if he had drawn breath since he had arrived.

He was getting to know his fellow trainees quite well now, forced to because there was so little chance to get away from them, and while the twin jokers in the pack had had more than their fair share of mileage out of his age and his dietary habits, he had soon come to realise that he wasn't the only one they ragged on, and it had gone a long way to making him feel as if he had been accepted into the group.

This evening Dobbs had been assigned as rear seat, navigator, to Guy Anders, the one man in the team who was still something of an enigma to Dobbs. He wasn't overly friendly, but he wasn't hostile either.

That was definitely Eugene Webber's territory, and the Navy man had made no effort to conceal his dislike for Roger Dobbs.

Their wingman this evening was Frank Campbell, with Chuck McCrea assigned as his rear seat, and their flight had been uneventful, a routine milk run, for Campbell and Anders to clock up their required hours, and soon they would be making a slow looping turn and descending, making back for the airfield, and the night landing that was the real reason for this flight.

Dobbs had passed his own routine night landing test flight the previous evening with flying colours, with Malcolm Shaw as his rear seat, so he knew that they had almost reached the point in the flight when Anders would bank the jet and head for home and that the pilot would soon be calling out for readings from his rear seat man.

Dobbs was also monitoring the routine chit chat bouncing back and forth between Anders and Campbell, and Campbell and McCrea, keeping each other apprised of their aircrafts status and the skies around them.

"Time to take this pigeon home to roost …." Guy Anders spoke in a deep, rich voice as he eased the jet into a tight right bank and concluded the manoeuvre with a another lazy barrel roll and as the world righted it's self around him once more, Dobbs called out fuel levels, altitude, velocity and radar readings to his pilot.

Suddenly, there was an unusual rattling noise and instantly the jet quivered, shimmying and jolting and even before Dobbs had a chance to try to evaluate the problem, the protective canopy covering their heads buckled and splintered and was ripped clean off, disappearing into the inky, star filled night.

Dobbs was almost yanked clean up out of his seat.

He felt his shoulder restraints tighten around his upper body, and G force pushing him so hard back against his seat he thought his spine would snap, and Frank Campbell's anxious voice in his head set screaming,

"Holy cow! Flame out …. Shit they lost their canopy …. Eject, eject, guys, Eject!"

Recovering his wits, Dobbs scanned the dials and gauges before him, a job made infinitely more difficult by the fact that he was being tossed around by G-force, their velocity and the turbulence, a wicked gale force wind that suddenly raged around him, it's cold fingers clawing at his clothes and finding its way inside his flight suit, as he fought to focus on the control panel before him, watching the altimeter spinning wildly, making his eyes water.

For a brief instant, Dobbs wondered if his pilot was still conscious, knowing that it wasn't unheard of for the canopy to give a guy's head a good thwack when it was released, but he could see Anders' helmet encased head moving from side to side, in front of him, and now, at last he could feel some measure of control return to their descent, even if the jet was still bucking and bouncing like a rodeo steer.

He could only guess at the arm wrestling match Guy Anders was engaged in with the stick.

"Hey, Dobbs, you still with me back there …." Anders panted raggedly over Dobbs headset now, sounding groggy and winded, and Dobbs again found himself wondering if the pilot had been knocked out, if only briefly.

"Roger that, Major," Dobbs confirmed quickly, relieved to hear Anders voice. "Being shaken around like a cocktail but aside from loosening a few teeth, I'll survive. You ok?"

"Roger that. Got a bang on the head, but I'm ok now."

"Are you able to continue?" Roger Dobbs asked a little breathlessly, feeling his stomach churning and roiling as he was tossed around in his seat, but there was genuine concern in his voice.

"Roger that," Anders confirmed swiftly, grunting loudly as he wrestled with the flight controls.

"Any significant structural damage caused by the canopy release?" Dobbs quizzed, swallowing down the sensation of nausea.

"Negative, but my instruments are shot. I'll need you to be my eyes and ears back there."

"Roger," Dobbs concurred, guessing that the sudden change in air pressure had broken the glass fronted dials, then he quickly filled Anders in on the condition of their aircraft and their altitude, course and velocity.

"Maverick One, this is Maverick Two, Anders, Dobbs, get the hell out of there! Eject, Eject!"

"Negative, Captain Campbell, we can bring her in …." Anders insisted calmly, but there was an underlying edge to his voice that indicated his resentment at the implication that he did not have things under control.

"Tell me what we got, Dobbs," he returned his attention to his rear seat man now, ignoring the edge of excitement in Frank Campbell's voice.

"Maverick Two, you've got a good view out there, what's the damage?" Dobbs demanded without stopping to think about it, knowing even as he finished speaking that the request should have come from the pilot, but Dobbs was concerned that from his tone of voice, his bunk mate could see some structural damage that they were not aware of yet.

"You mean aside from one engine being out and your canopy gone …."

"Roger that …."

"Dammit, Thor …." Guy Anders rough voice cut in to their conversation, Frank Campbell's nickname sounding odd on his lips. "Quit distracting my rear seat and let him do his job!" He bellowed over the radio now, and Dobbs winced as the volume almost deafened him. "Dammit, Dobbs I need you focused. I asked you to give me the numbers."

"Roger that,"

Again Dobbs called out their altitude, velocity, rate of descent and attitude to his pilot and listened while Anders put in a mayday call to the field to alert them to the fact that he was coming in damaged and without the benefit of instruments.

"Damn, it's hard to keep the nose up …." He heard Anders gasping. "She's fighting me all the way …." He panted raggedly, having to use all his strength to keep control over the stick. "Like trying to fly a Sherman Tank …."

"Can you try to relight engine number one?" Roger Dobbs asked, but he suspected that he already knew the answer that he would get. Anders had probably already tried, while he had been calling out the numbers to him.

"I already tried, Dobbs, twice, but no dice," Anders confirmed. "Guess we're both gonna need a clean pair of pants when this is over, buddy."

Despite the dire nature of the situation he found himself in, Roger Dobbs could not suppress a smile. A sense of humour was something that quite often made the difference in situations like these.

"If we do, I'm sending you the bill for dry cleaning," he quipped back and heard Anders soft chuckle in his ears.

"Ok, Dobbs, gear down," Anders ordered at last.

"Roger," Dobbs confirmed, realising that they were on their final approach to the landing strip and that they were coming in too fast.

Obviously Anders was banking on the landing gear giving them a little drag and slowing down their descent.

Roger Dobbs activated the switch to drop the landing gear, but the light stubbornly refused to go green, indicating that the gear was down and locked into place.

"Dobbs?"

"No green light, Anders," Dobbs confirmed in a tight voice. "And I didn't hear the gear go down."

Although it was not surprising with the howling gale drowning out everything except the sound of their ragged breathing through their breathing regulators and Anders' barked orders over the radio.

"Me neither," Anders sighed raggedly into Dobbs ear over the headset "Maverick Two, what do you see?"

"One wheel down, the other seems to be stuck in the undercarriage," Frank Campbell, sounding a little calmer now informed.

"Roger. Confirm that. No gear."

"Maverick One this is the tower, please confirm your status," the controller in the tower requested in a calm voice.

"Maverick One, roger. Confirm, we have sustained damage, due to unscheduled emergency canopy release and have no instruments and no landing gear," Anders intoned solemnly. "Guess you'd better call out the cavalry …."

"Roger that, Maverick One. Standby for instructions."

"Instructions my ass! We have ourselves an underwear situation here, son, so we're coming in, ready or not!"

"Negative Maverick One! Negative. Go around, Sir, repeat, go around. We need to spray the strip with foam in preparation for an emergency landing. Maverick Two, you are cleared for immediate landing, Sir."

"Forget it kid, this thing flies like a lead balloon. Clear the damned field 'cos we're coming in, fast!"

"We have to burn off the rest of the fuel," Dobbs advised his pilot looking at the gauge before him that indicated a quarter tank of fuel remained on board. "Or dump it fast," he added, watching as Frank Campbell peeled his craft away from them and began his descent to the airstrip.

"Roger, go ahead and dump it. We can't go round, the flight controls are not responding. I can't turn her."

"Terrific! Then maybe it's time we thought about bailing out?"

Dobbs hated having to be the one to make the suggestion, almost as much as he hated the idea of ditching the craft, but it would have been irresponsible of him not to at least put the idea in his pilots' head, to be the voice of reason, knowing that it was a tough call to make, when you had so many other things to think about, but knowing that in his place, he would welcome someone else pointing out that there was no shame in walking away, if you could.

The thought of being catapulted out of the cockpit by explosive forces beneath his seat and enduring a hard, bone jarring and teeth rattling landing on dry, compact desert sand was infinitely more appealing than dying in a ball of flame.

"I've never lost one yet …." Anders snarled in response.

"I never lost one yet either, but we can't stay virgins for ever! Did no one ever tell you there's a first time for everything?"

"I can handle it," Anders assured, and there was something in his voice that Roger Dobbs immediately recognised.

Self belief.

Supreme self confidence.

"Ok …." Dobbs let out a deep sigh, knowing that if he were in Anders shoes, he would probably feel the same way.

Dobbs knew his own limitations, and he had the confidence in his own ability to get the job done.

Anders obviously felt that he had the skill to deal with the situation so all Dobbs could do was trust him and sit back and enjoy the ride.

"An underwear situation …. I like that. Gotta remember that one," he allowed him self a soft chuckle of appreciation.

"That's the last of the fuel, Major. We're on fumes," Roger Dobbs advised after a brief moment of silence. "Guess we just turned into a glider."

"I always wanted to land the space shuttle. Now we'll have a better idea of how it feels. Why don't you try the gear again?" Anders suggested.

"Roger," Dobbs affirmed.

What could it hurt?

So he reached out and hit the switch to retract the gear, but again, with the wind howling all around him, the tiny jet fighter being tossed and bounced around by velocity and turbulence so all he could feel was a sensation not unlike being thrown around on a stormy sea, and seeing no change in the light on his status board Dobbs had no idea if the gear was up or not.

What the hell?

He hit the button again, to bring the gear down once more, just as the jet fighter passed through a nasty pocket of turbulence, which almost lifted both men out of their seats before slamming them down hard again and winding them badly.

To Roger Dobbs amazement, when his eyes were again able to focus, he found the landing gear light glowing green and the barber pole indicator in place, confirming that the wheels were down.

"Gear down!" Roger Dobbs yelled triumphantly, realising that the jolt as they passed through the pocket of unstable air had helped to loosen the gear from where it had been stuck in the fuselage.

"Locked?"

"Can't be sure, but it's too late to worry about it now …." Dobbs reminded as he watched the lights of the landing strip rushing up to greet them at alarming speed.

"Tower, Maverick One, we have a gear down indicator light, but can't be sure if they're locked. Can you verify gear down from the ground?"

"Roger Maverick One, we see, wheels down."

The controller confirmed and Dobbs immediately realised that they had someone with binoculars out on the field watching their descent.

"So, how are you doing with that foam? Have you cleared the strip yet?"

"Maverick Two is just taxiing off the runway, and we have the fire crew laying down foam now."

"Roger that, tell them to make it snappy and then get the hell out of there. We're out of fuel and on our final approach."

"Roger."

Dobbs heard the gulp in the young flight controller's voice as he responded, and wondered if he would be needing a dry pair of pants when this was all over too.

"Here we go Dobbs, be ready to kiss your ass goodbye …."

The jet fighter came in to line up with the run way, the pilot fighting with her all the way, to keep her straight and level, to keep her wings from tipping up and her nose from dipping down ….

Everyone in the tower watched and waited, holding their breath, crossing their fingers, muttering expletives and prayers under their breath as the jet fighter rapidly lost altitude, getting closer and closer to the tarmac, anxiously waiting to see what would happen when the wheels collided with solid ground.

Roger Dobbs waited with baited breath to feel terra firma beneath him.

He'd been in situations like this before, in 'Nam, and during his brief career as a test pilot, close shaves and near misses. He had always made the decision to stick with it, not to bail out, and he had never once doubted that he would walk away, so he understood why Guy Anders would feel the same way right now.

Still, he was also aware of the law of averages, and that one day, even his luck would run out.

Still, he had a feeling ….

Maybe this wasn't the one that he wouldn't walk away from after all, he found himself thinking with elation as the wheels made hard contact with the ground, but held the jet's weight, bouncing and dipping but locked into position as the jet fighter gracelessly slid and swerved and slipped down the runway, foam floating up around the open cockpit, Guy Anders fighting to keep her from skidding off the strip into the harder uneven ground on either side of the runway and stomping on the brakes.

With fire trucks screaming and wailing, tearing after them, the tiny jet careened down the runway and finally came to a juddering halt as Anders yanked on the stick to avoid running off the end of the landing strip, and the front landing wheel finally gave way under the sudden unexpected change in direction and crumpled beneath them.

Dobbs saw sparks fly briefly, whizzing past on either side of the front of the jet, as the nose grated along the floor, the screeching of metal scraping against the blacktop sending a shiver down his spine, setting his teeth on edge, but then, at last the fighter was still.

There was a flurry of activity in the minutes that followed, minutes when both men hardly had time to draw breath, as people descended on the jet, strong hands reaching in to remove their helmets and breathing regulators and release their safety harnesses before bodily lift them out of their seats, ignoring both men's protests that they were fine, as they were laid down on to stretchers, before being transported to ambulance trucks and whisked back to Project Thunderbird's main buildings to be checked out.

"Oh man, what a ride!" Guy Anders finally turned to Dobbs and grinned as they lay beside each other in the medical facility waiting for the doctors to return and pronounce them fit.

"Yeah, but let's not do it again in a hurry," Dobbs grinned back.

"Are you criticizing my driving, Dobbs?" Anders smirked.

"No Major, just your emergency stopping!"

Both men dissolved into laughter, caused no doubt by utter relief at finding themselves on firm ground and all in one piece, both knowing that it could have turned out so differently.

"Thanks for backing me up, up there," Anders sobered at last and Roger Dobbs knew that he was referring to the moment when he had decided not to bail out.

"Hey, that's what rear seats are for."

"You know there will have to be an investigation into what happened …."

"Sure," Dobbs sighed softly. "It's procedure, and let's face it, we did break, or at least badly bend a very expensive piece of military hardware," he smothered a guffaw, knowing that if they laughed too much someone was going to jump to the conclusion that they were hysterical, and they might end up staying in this hospital room longer than was actually necessary.

"We could be grounded," Anders also struggled not to laugh out loud, obviously coming to the same conclusion. "Face a Court Martial …."

"Maybe," Dobbs concurred.

"I guess you also know that the other guys are going to come to their own conclusions about what happened up there …." His voice trailed away then, and Dobbs knew that he was being serious.

"Coincidence, jinx or something more worrying?" Dobbs regarded Anders with penetrating blue eyes, but kept his tone casual, as Anders merely shrugged.

"What do you think?" Anders asked him outright now.

"I think it goes with the territory, Major," Dobbs replied with sincerity now. "Flame outs happen, canopies eject. Accidents do happen, people do make mistakes …." He mimicked Eugene Webber's words to him back on the first day he had arrived, and this drew a sardonic smile from Anders. "Let's just hope we've had our brush with misfortune for this project …."

"What, you mean you didn't enjoy my little victory dance?"

"Is that what it was? I thought you were proving the theory about the irresistible force meeting the immoveable object …."

"Well, at least we know Isaac Newton was right …." Anders paused for effect.

"What goes up, must come down!" They said in unison and were again consumed with laughter.

"I'm glad you guys find it so funny."

The new voice belonged to Colonel Thomas Jardine who had entered the room they were sharing on silent feet, although the expression on his face was a mixture of anger, relief and more than a hint of amusement at finding the two men who had just had a very close brush with death, able to find something to laugh about.

"I hope you don't have any fancy plans for your future gentlemen, because it is going to take you both the rest of your military careers to pay off the cost of repairing that aircraft!"

The Colonel's face suddenly broke into a huge grin at the looks on Dobbs and Anders faces and both men shared a pained look before allowing themselves another chuckle.

"How soon can we get out of here, Colonel?" Guy Anders asked at last.

"That will be up to Dr Sykes, but my guess is, you'll both be here for at least one night, to make sure there are no after effects. Dr Sykes told me you were knocked out, briefly, Major Anders, and she is anxious to make sure that you don't have a delayed reaction. And as for you Major Dobbs, you have some nasty bruising to your ribs, and even though you say not, we can't rule out the possibility that you too didn't lose consciousness just for a moment or two. So, relax gentlemen and get a good night's sleep, and yes, that is an order."

"Sir, yes Sir!"