Noah

NOAH

Steven Abernathy

A Destin Arts Publication

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 by Steven Abernathy

CHAPTER 1

There is an aviator’s proverb that says, It is far better to be on the ground and wishing you were flying that it is to be flying and wishing you were on the ground. I had thought of that wise old maxim several times since taking off on this particular morning into humid, bumpy weather with low ceiling, low visibility, and the rough, craggy terrain of high mountains only a few hundred feet below me. The subdued ‘whump’ from the front of the plane followed by a sudden and complete loss of power from the single engine of my light aircraft, however, brought desires of being safely on the ground to the very front of my brain.

The noise, the power loss, and the ineffective windmilling of the propeller were all dire indicators of the fact that my engine’s crankshaft had broken, and I had absolutely no hope of restoring power. The landscape below me was one of sheer cliffs and rocky inclines which were too steep to land upon. My only hope, and a thin one it was, appeared to be a rough road or cart path cut into one of the rocky inclines. It followed the contour of the mountain, and in doing so, was very crooked. I could see no place on the track that appeared to run in a straight line for more than fifty or sixty yards. That meant I would have to touch down, get the nose of the plane down immediately, and steer the nose wheel around the turns in the road at a high rate of speed

or risk going off the road over the mercilessly steep mountainside into whatever lay below.

As I guided my silent craft toward the mountain road, I realized upon closer inspection that the problem was far worse than I had previously imagined. The track, which now appeared to be little more than a rutted out path for carts or wagons, was only twelve to fifteen feet wide. My Bellanca Super Viking has a wingspan of 34 feet. The mountain rose steeply on one side and fell away just as abruptly on the other. In order for my wheels to touch down on the road, I would have to approach the track at a forty-five degree angle, literally flying into the mountain, and turn at the last possible instant with the body of the aircraft over the road. Hopefully, this action would snap the wing on the uphill side of the road off of the fuselage and allow the width of the body of the aircraft, wheels intact, to settle on the track so it could be steered with the nose wheel. This particular maneuver is not routinely taught to students in flight school, nor was it a recommended procedure in the flight manual for my Viking, but it was the best I could think of at the moment.

All of these plans and decisions were made within only a few seconds, as the ground was rising quickly toward my unpowered aircraft. I did not dwell upon the dubiousness of my landing plan as I lined up the nose of the Bellanca at a forty-five degree angle to the mountain road. I thought of it as simply the best decision I could make under the circumstances, and I would live with it. The thought of dying as a result of my decision did not occur to me until later. I sat up straighter in my seat as I approached the road. I watched my airspeed indicator nervously, as I was gliding at very near stall speed, which is the slowest possible speed at which the pilot can have positive control of the aircraft. The idea was to land at the slowest possible speed so I could control the one-winged craft through the curves and stop as quickly as possible. At one hundred feet above the road, I visibly tensed. At seventy-five feet I was just beginning to place slight pressure on the rudder pedal to swing the tail around and crash the wing into the mountain when my eye caught a slight glimpse of green against the stark gray and brown background of the forbidding terrain. The irresistible green color was just visible from beyond the curvature of the mountainside and, even though I could not afford to hesitate because of my low altitude relative to the road, I nudged the nose of the Viking slightly away from the mountain in order to see what was around the bend.

The sight below caused my breath to catch and my tension to evaporate. As I jerked my plane away from the mountain I whooped and hollered! Having never been a regular churchgoer, I didn’t often think of God, but on this momentous occasion I looked up and shouted jubilant thanks to Him and anyone else I could think of who might be up there looking down over me. Fifteen hundred feet below was a lush green valley encircled by ugly gray-brown peaks. I could see a stream or small river flowing the length of the valley with a regal carpet of purple flowers on one side of the water and an equally beautiful array of canary yellow blossoms on the opposite side. There were a few houses, some terraced farmland, and a few small roads or tracks. I saw where my old friend the mountain road emerged from a taluce slope and actually seemed to straighten out a bit. This was still rough country, but much preferred over what I had been facing only a minute or two before. What held my attention the most was an area that looked for all the world like a dirt airstrip. It was at the farthest end of the valley from my position, and I wasn’t at all sure I could make it, but it looked so flat and inviting I couldn’t resist challenging the glide ratio of my aircraft in an attempt to land in a safe spot.

Student pilots are taught to aim their airplane toward the center of the runway when making a dead stick landing, that is, a landing with no power. By trying for the center of the runway rather than the near end, the pilot creates room for error if he overestimates the gliding capabilities of his unpowered craft and comes up short of his target. As I silently slipped through the rarified mountain air and approached the dirt strip, two things became obvious. First, I could confirm that the strip was, in fact, an airport, complete with hangar buildings and a few airplanes which, from a distance, looked like American made crop dusters. The second fact which was becoming apparent, and which was of more immediate importance to me, was that my glidepath was going to terminate in a touchdown well short of the center of the runway. At the last I realized I would not make the runway at all, but was going to touch down in a relatively flat grassy area about a hundred yards short of the runway proper. The only obstacle in my way was a rather formidable looking chain link fence which encircled the entire airport to keep intruders such as myself from trespassing on the property.

I do not know whether I touched down before striking the fence or literally flew through it. As the plane impacted the fence it jerked to the right. Although I was wearing a regulation seat belt, the craft was not equipped with shoulder harnesses, so the violent movement at impact caused me to lurch forward and sharply to the left. My head struck the port window with enough force to crack the heavy Plexiglas, and at the same time knocked me out as effectively as a George Foreman uppercut.

When I regained consciousness an undetermined period of time later it was in response to a series of rough pokes in my ribs and someone shouting at me in a foreign language. As I opened my eyes I was staring into the business end of an old World War II vintage rifle, probably an M-14. I remember thinking it strange during that brief moment of consciousness that there was only the rifle, that there was no one holding it there in my face. Someone must have been there, however, for when I passed out or was not dutifully responsive, the poking of the ribs and shouting began anew. My eyes opened to a view of the rifle bore again. All else was out of focus, although I thought I could detect movement in an area I presumed to be beyond the length of the rifle. Focusing my eyes as they moved along the barrel proved to be a challenge for which I was not ready. A wave of nausea engulfed me and I lost consciousness once more. Rough shakes and loud voices aroused me a third time to find the rifle still in my face. This time I was alert enough to realize that my head ached severely. Slowly, I brought a hand up and placed tentative fingers against the left side of my forehead. As I cautiously moved my hand away from my head and in front of my face, my blurred vision detected a swatch of red color among the varied skin tones which I assumed to be my fingers. My mind processed these colors as meaning there must be blood on my forehead, and I even deduced that I must have a concussion of some sort to cause my vision to be so blurred. I slowly moved my hand to my lap and cautiously shifted my eyes to look back into the bore of the rifle. My deliberate movements were not in response to fear of my captors or oppressors, whoever they were. I was not thinking that clearly. Rather, I moved slowly because the chain of command between my brain and my muscles of movement was operating at a snail’s pace and it was the best I could do.

Minutes ticked by and I did not pass out again. As my senses slowly returned along with the increased pounding of a world-class headache, I realized that I was still in the cockpit of my plane. This sudden realization was not born of sight, for with my unfocused vision I saw only the rifle bore, but came from the familiar airplane smells of fuel and oil, and the familiar feel of the way my pilot seat was contoured to my body. Efforts to focus my eyes to see out the cockpit to determine where I was brought only hazy bright light and more head pain. Suddenly I recognized that the noise around me was a group of people talking excitedly in a foreign language which didn’t sound even remotely familiar. In my current state, however, I was not certain even spoken English would have meant much, so I didn’t put much faith in what I could or could not understand. The rifle understandably concerned me, and I was determined to see who was at the other end of the weapon. I shifted my gaze from the end of the barrel to the wooden stock of the firearm. As I stared intently at the brown blob with indistinct borders, it slowly materialized into a recognizable part of the weapon. I repeated the process and shifted my gaze to the approximate location of the trigger housing. My reward in a few minutes was a clear vision of the housing, with a slender olive-skinned finger wrapped around the trigger and poised to squeeze if offered any reason. Several subsequent movements brought me to the face of my captor. As before, my first vision of his face was a complete blur. As the haze cleared and I could look into his face and his eyes, I felt a cold finger of fear go through me for the first time that day.

The face in front of me, which moved in and out of focus, was that of a boy – a frightened boy of possibly twelve or fourteen years who looked as if he was gazing upon a monster. When a man holds a gun on you, whether he is a grizzled old farmer who has caught you stealing watermelons or a professional soldier or policeman holding you as prisoner, you can more or less expect certain reactions to each of your actions or movements. A man can be reasoned with, even predicted and anticipated to a certain degree. A boy, on the other hand, is an erratic wild card. A frightened boy may pee in his pants. He may turn and run. Or he may decide the most expedient way to eliminate the source of his fear is to shoot you between the eyes without warning.

This boy was terrified. He was sweating profusely even though there was a cool breeze off of the mountains in the waning light of the afternoon. His eyes were wide, his pupils dilated. As he came into clear focus and I stared at him intently, afraid to so much as bat my eyelids, he began to shake. Intentionally flying into a mountain at a hundred miles per hour in a half-witted attempt to knock a wing off an airplane in order to land on a narrow, crooked oxcart on the side of a thousand foot drop-off was nothing compared to this! I had no idea what it was about me that frightened the boy so, but there was no doubt in my mind that in a very few seconds he was going to pull the trigger of the old rifle and extinguish my life and…

Voices. As my senses continued to return, I heard many voices talking loudly and excitedly around me and my plane. The language was foreign, I was sure of that now, and not one with which I was familiar. The tones and the voice inflections sounded much like any group of people in which all were speaking at once trying to describe or explain some exciting event. That was understandable. Perhaps some of the voices were speaking to the boy with the rifle. It was my sincerest hope that at least a few of the voices were trying to calm the boy before he made a sieve of my cranium. I thought perhaps an imploring look directed toward some of the closer members of the group might buy a little time or even milk a little compassion from those among the onlookers who might hold some measure of influence over the boy.

As I gazed toward the crowd, I do not know whether or not I was successful in projecting a facial expression which expressed humility, fear, or the desire to live another day. I do know my initial efforts to see the crowd surrounding my airplane were unsuccessful because of blurred vision, paralyzing head pain, and a cresciendoing wave of nausea. It was with sheer bull-headed determination that I worked through the discomfort and glared at the group of blurred bodies until they at last began to come into focus. The faces I saw were mostly men, mostly young to middle aged, and mostly armed and wearing military garb. Many were unshaven and wore only partial uniforms. A few wore a variety of bandages. I saw no insignias of rank, although in my current mental and physical condition I wasn’t exactly in investigative mode and could easily have missed them. The general impression given by this somewhat ununiform quasimilitary crew was that they were a guerilla band of some type in one of the never ending eastern European conflicts for political boundaries or ethnic purity.

As I stared at the crowd and inwardly congratulated myself for seeing several things at one time, a voice which sounded authoritative spoke four or five syllables in the distance. All heads turned toward the voice, which spoke again as the crowd watched. Reflexively following the gaze of the crowd, I turned my head slightly and looked out the window of my craft in the same direction. I saw a blurred vision of black which seemed to be coming toward me with exaggerated movements. Black cloak, black hood, and a large black hat, all blurred to possibly twice their normal size. Black arms which seemed to fly into the air as the apparition walked closer to me. My still befuddled mind insisted on identifying the indistinct vision as Darth Vader, the black hooded enforcer for Steven Spielberg’s evil empire in the movie Star Wars.

As Darth moved closer, the crowd around my aircraft began to pull back to create a path down which the dark clad figure moved quickly. My boy captor even had his eyes on the approaching figure instead of me, a fact which gave me considerable ease from my state of high tension. The apparition reached the door of my plane, spoke several words to the boy, and reached in to gently ease the boy and his rifle out of the range of my vision. Darth Vader, with that action, became my everlasting hero.

Once the boy and his weapon had been extricated from the cockpit and the area around the door cleared, Darth himself climbed into the plane with me. His appearance next to me forced me to again adjust the depth of my visual field, this time from far to near, with greater suddenness that I was prepared for. The blurriness and nausea returned, although with less intensity than before. The passage of time from minute to minute still didn’t have much meaning for me, but it seemed as if only a short time had passed before I was able to bring my benefactor’s face into focus.

He was not Darth Vader after all. He was, however, dressed in a voluminous black robe which was reminiscent of a wizard’s cloak in a Walt Disney cartoon. Attached to the robe was a black hood which he had pulled up over his head, covering his ears. Topping off this bleak ensemble was perhaps the silliest looking hat I had ever seen. I began to laugh uncontrollably, but stopped with fearful suddenness after only a few seconds when his passive facial expression told me I was neither laughing nor moving. Was I paralyzed – or perhaps just dreaming? The ridiculous hat was at least two feet tall. It was black, of course, and was shaped, for lack of a better example, like the big hat the Pope wears during the formal ceremonies I had sometimes seen reported on the evening news. Topping off my friend’s black hat were silver tassels which hung down along the sides. The front was covered with several designs or letters written in silver and red thread. Naturally, the structure was so tall as to prohibit the wearer from sitting up straight in the small enclosure. In order to reach me, my friend – I had come to think of him as that – had to kneel on the wing, support his upper body with his arms inside the craft as if he were doing push-ups, and tilt his head back almost ninety degrees from this prone position in order to look into my face.

Are you English? he asked from his awkward position. Can you hear me? Do you speak English?

I thought to respond and tell him I was an American, but I simply could not will my body to move or speak. After quizzing me in a few more languages and watching my unresponsiveness, he told me, again in English, that he would help me, and wiggled out of the plane and beyond my field of vision. I heard his voice outside, and after a few minutes two small but strong looking men moved into the cockpit. They began, I suppose as gently as possible given the circumstance, to extricate me from the plane. The movement, however, unleashed choruses of pain and dizziness for which I was unprepared and woefully unequipped to cope. I passed out.

CHAPTER 2

When my eyes next opened I was staring into the face of a concerned looking middle-aged woman with Mediterranean features. She appeared to be fussing over my hair, or perhaps with a bandage on my forehead. I was pleasantly surprised to realize that I was seeing her quite clearly. She started and made a noise of surprise when she noticed I was looking at her; then she straightened and walked away quickly while calling to someone in the distance in what sounded like the same foreign language I had hard at the plane. After she left the room I looked around and discovered I was in a narrow bed in what appeared to be a residential or dormitory bedroom. The room was small and sparsely furnished – my bed and a small four drawer chest in one corner making up the entire bedroom suite. There was a sink attached to one wall, so at least I was in a place with some semblance of modern plumbing. The walls of the windowless room were barren of decoration, a fact that made me suddenly think my room might be a cell rather than a bedroom. Could I be a prisoner? I thought back to the events which had landed me in this situation.

It had seemed a good idea in the beginning. My job in the real world had been successful but mundane and stressful for twenty-three years. I had rarely taken a vacation for fear that the business would collapse without me. Finally, we reached a point where my subordinates were performing efficiently and intelligently, and I allowed them to convince me to take some time off to do whatever I wanted. I had piloted my own airplane for many years, and this around-the-world flight promised to be a challenge that would bring a level of excitement into my life that had been missing for a long time. How little I knew. The mountain of paperwork required to convince the government and my aircraft insurance company that I was capable of piloting a craft internationally should have warned me away from the trip, but I persisted. The expensive refit of the plane to upgrade the navigation system and add the life rafts and jackets required for transoceanic travel was another warning I failed to heed. The aircraft even had to be repainted and the identification numbers changed to conform to international flight regulations. More paperwork followed to obtain permission to use flight corridors crossing the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and to comply with customs regulations for the many nations I would be visiting. A more intelligent man would probably have listened to the subtle messages and given up, but I fought and defeated the regulatory mountain, and finally took off on my journey.

Once started, the flight was enjoyable beyond my expectations. I flew north and east from New York, basically following Lindbergh’s route across the North Atlantic over Ireland, England, and the Channel into Paris. From there I crisscrossed Europe, flying as far south as Gibraltar in Spain and as far north as Stockholm, Sweden. From there I flew south again through western Poland, parts of Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Austria, then west to Switzerland and south once more into Italy. Spending a day or a few days at every stop, I saw the sights and met the people of each country, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. In Italy I followed the western coast to Pisa, then overflew the island of Elba on my way southeast to Rome. I found myself enthralled by the antiquities of Rome and spent a wonderful two weeks there. When I departed, I flew north again to Venice, where I stopped for a few days to rest and see the city as well as plan the rest of my flight. From Italy I wanted to see Egypt – Alexandria, Giza, Cairo, the Nile – and then fly on to Jerusalem.

I should have traveled south once more, across Corsica and Sardinia into Tunisia. From there, I could have followed the Mediterranean east across Libya into Egypt. Perhaps if my mind had been more intent on planning and less absorbed by the sights of Venice I would have made this logical and proper decision. Circumstances led me to decide, however, to fly east into Yugoslavia. I was certainly aware of the constant state of war between the rival states and ethnic groups within the nation, and my intent throughout this adventure had been to avoid such dangerous areas, but Venice had clouded my judgment and I made a poor decision.

I flew to Zagreb and landed for fuel; then, on that fateful morning, headed southeast across the mountains of those eternally feuding Balkan states. I had flown several hundred miles when my engine had failed, and did not know exactly where I had landed…

The Bellanca! Suddenly I remembered it all. The engine had failed and I had crash landed through a chain link fence. There had been a boy pointing an old rifle in my face. How much of that had been real? I remembered pain – severe pain in my head. The woman I had seen just a few minutes ago had been doing something to my head. I moved my right hand and arm slowly and watched them as they moved toward my face. The arm seemed to move properly. I wiggled my fingers in front of my eyes. They were all present and functioning properly. My fingers tentatively explored my forehead and discovered a bandage which began over my left eye and extended across the left side of my head to an inch or two behind my ear. I absorbed this information as confirmation that the events I remembered had really happened. I wondered if my plane was destroyed. I wondered where it was, which made me smile a little as I thought to wonder where I was.

The door to my room opened and a tall, stern looking man in camouflaged military fatigues entered. He drew up a small straight-backed metal chair I had not seen behind the head of my bed, and sat down.

The registration papers in your aircraft are from the United States, he stated flatly with only a slight accent. Are you American? Do you speak English?

I looked at him with no small suspicion, not knowing whether or not I should answer. Finally, I decided on truth. Yes, I answered. Yes to both. I am a citizen of the United States. My passport and travel permits are in my bag in the luggage compartment of the Bellanca. My name, by the way, is John Grey. Now, would you be kind enough to tell me where I am and how long I have been here? Am I seriously injured? Am I a prisoner? Have I landed in the middle of a war? Who are you and who was the man in the Darth Vader costume?

My visitor raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. Please, please, he implored, all of your questions will be answered, but one at a time, please. First, I am Colonel Shalomon. I lead a small group of brave men and women who are desperately fighting to save their homeland. You saw some of them, if you remember, around your airplane after you crashed through our airport security fence. Our first thought was that you were leading some sort of enemy attack on our compound, but our aircraft mechanic has since determined that you had an engine failure and were trying to land at our air strip.

Where am I, Colonel? I asked. What homeland are you fighting for?

The Colonel looked at me sternly. Am I to understand that you do not know where you have landed? he asked. When I shook my head negatively, he continued. If you truly do not know your exact location, then it is probably best that it remain so. Let me say only that, just as you Americans fought for your national freedom two centuries ago, so do my people fight their oppressor now in hopes of achieving freedom.

How long have I been here, sir? I asked. There were kind eyes looking out of the Colonel’s stern face. I decided I liked this man.

He stood and walked a few steps, gazing at the featureless walls, before answering, My men found your clothes and your papers when they searched your plane after the crash three days ago. We have no doctor here, but our young medic, who is very talented and has saved many lives, said you had a severe concussion. He treated you with whatever poor medicines we have available and, well, here you are.

I would like to meet him and thank him personally for the care he has given me, I said. Was my Bellanca destroyed in the crash?

Your aircraft is completely repaired and in A-1 condition, Colonel Shalomon said proudly.

How can that be? I asked incredulously.

We have a very good aircraft mechanic, trained in America, he answered. The actual damage to your craft was minimal except for the engine being destroyed and the propeller being bent when you struck the fence. There was some slight damage to the forward edges of both wings, but it amounted to little more than scratches and minor dents which our craftsmen were able to repair quickly. I think they were happy for the diversion from military duty. As for the engine and propeller, we have several crop duster aircraft manufactured by your American Cessna corporation which were given to my country a few years ago as part of a foreign aid package from your government, supposedly to help us farm this valley and others nearby. Yanus, our mechanic, was excited to find that your craft had the same engine as our crop dusters. He simply removed the engine and propeller from one of our planes and, with what he called a few minor modifications, installed them on yours.

I was completely stunned by the Colonel’s revelation. It would seem, Colonel, I carefully began, "that I have received the best of everything from you and your people. I am certainly grateful for the fine medical care, and I am happy beyond belief that you had both the capacity and the willingness to repair my plane. I don’t wish to seem ungrateful, but I must ask the obvious question. Why