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A story for someone. 11/16/2006

It is common for the national carriers, i.e. airlines, of various countries to have special arrangements with the government with regards to the transfer of personnel on short notice to various destinations around the world. In many regards, flying commercial for special operations teams has certain advantages. It allows them to fly undercover, so to speak. People take notice of large planes landing at deserted air bases in the middle of the night, but no one takes any notice of yet another Airbus flying into a commercial airport in the middle of the day.

There are of course, certain obstacles to this. First and foremost is that teams tend to travel at zero notice. Experience has shown that the powers that be, which is basically the government, tend to waffle about committing terminal force, until it is almost, but not quite, too late. This has the effect of having teams turn up very suddenly at the airport, laden with gear bags that look extremely heavy, making muffled clanking metallic sounds, and no one is allowed to look into them.

Airlines understand this, and usually go out of their way to be accomodating to teams. They get to charge full whack for the seat to begin with, and load other “miscellaneous” charges on ticket, all of which goes back to the government, and gets pushed back to the tax payer. The airline usually gets a notification from base, and are informed that they should be expecting a team to be boarding a specific flight. This is done with as little notice as possible, in order to preserve security.

However, as is always the case in operations of this sort, miscommunication and fuck-ups occur on a regular basis. You can practically count on Mr. Murphy making his appearance every time someone whispers the word “assignment”. As it turns out, one day, in the depths of the rainy season, the phone in the X.O.’s office finally rang, and we got a green light. We were packed, the gear was stowed away, and all we had to do was to get our arses into the van, and head down to the airport. We were told that there was lots of time, and the van driver was in no hurry, considering that it was raining heavily.

Until we approached the airport, and the driver told us the road was jammed with traffic that was not moving. So we inched along in the traffic, in the pouring rain. By the time we finally reached the airport, we knew we were terribly late. A ground officer met us at the security gate, and escorted us to the plane in his car. We stepped out of the van, in the pouring rain, onto the tarmac carrying our gear, and ran up the staircase to the skybridge connected to the plane.

We entered the door of the plane, dripping wet, and the stewardesses, who were informed of our arrival, were waiting at the door to usher us in. The leading crew came up to us, and asked who was in charge. The sarge nodded his head at me, and she came over to me. She whispered in my ear, very apologetically, that the flight was full, and that it wouldn’t be possible to seat us all in close proximity to one another. I asked her what she meant by that, and she said she would have to split the team, with some of us in business class, and the other half in coach. I grimaced at this. I prefer the team to be fairly close together, wherever and whenever possible. Not that we wanted to hold hands or anything, but more for the mental and moral support.

I shrugged my shoulders, and muttered an O.K. I wasn’t in any mood to argue, because we were all standing there dripping wet, and gear bags get heavy when you’re not moving. What I wasn’t prepared for was what happened when we got on the plane. Our late arrival had delayed the departure of the plane considerably. Walking in on the skybridge, I could see the plane captain looking at us through his cockpit window with an impatient look on his face. This was nothing compared to the looks we got when we started walking down the aisles, dripping rain water.

The plane was packed with families and children, this being the height of the school holidays. There were kids getting restless and asking daddy why the plane wasn’t moving yet. I could feel laser stares at me. It didn’t help when we started looking around for space in the overhead to stow away our gear. People were muttering and grumbling all around us.

The stewardess gets on the cabin P.A. system, and announces that the “technical difficulty” had been resolved, and that the flight would be departing shortly, and could everyone please fasten their seatbelts and return their seats to an upright position. I sat down in my seat, after making sure the team were in place. We were scattered all over the plane. And the other passengers were still giving us dirty looks and muttering under their breath.

I got into my seat, and the stewardess came over to me with an updated passenger manifest, showming the team’s seat assignments. I nodded thank you, and wondered if I had time for a drink before take-off. As the plane rolled back from the bay, my passenger, a middle aged businessman from his dressing, looked at me and said, “how come they delayed the flight for you?” I cringed inwardly. This was not a question that had an easy answer.

I thought for a second, and then turned to him and replied, “I work for the Devil. God makes special arrangements for us when we have to travel.”

• Posted in : Pulp Fiction
• Author : thesnark

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