Force Ten
"This is Terry Brown, reporting for KMAL in Miami and Tropical Storm Alex will soon be heading towards our city. It's registering at a Force 10 on the Beaufort scale, which means it's quite a storm, though not a hurricane yet. It is 50 miles off-shore and it is a big one," the static-filled radio buzzed in to Javier's steel-reinforced Piper Cub. There was no way this crazy coyote pilot would miss this opportunity for the ultimate rush- to survive the 150-mile per hour winds of a tropical depression. Sure, he'd flown over Iraq in a converted fighter-bomber during the war but against a country with virtually no anti-air defense system and a minimal air force, but he wanted to experience dodging flak and being one wrong move from dying. Javier Garcia would never use his skills as a fighter pilot to injure and kill others again once he learned the human cost of war. But the coyote would use his aviation skills to experience something that others would only read about- flying into the eye of a hurricane. So after hunting for terrorists in the Middle East, Mother Nature would be Javier's adversary.
Any pilot needs a good ground crew so Javier had his old Air Force buddy Fred Johnson, a fox who was just as crazy as Javier was and his wife, a female coyote air traffic controller by the name of Anna Navarro-Garcia who directed flights to and from Miami to keep him informed of weather conditions and the trajectory of other planes. The plan was to fly high into the stratosphere above the hurricane and then plunge directly into the calm center of the storm, known as the eye. There, the winds would completely cease and all the coyote would have to do would be cruise at the same speed of the hurricane and not run into the storm's eyewall, an intense region of storms or have the eyewall hit him from behind.
"All flights to and from Miami and the surrounding areas have been cancelled. You won't have to worry about other planes coming in. I just wish you wouldn't try this", his wife called on a cell phone while he was fueling his plane. Already in the distance he could see dozens of high cirrus clouds, the vanguard of the storm, and forewarning of what was to come. Already, the southeastern sky was filled with darkness as the storm approached Florida- but he was not going back. He received a phone call also from Fred saying that the government would not be flying either. This wasn't unprecedented as researchers and the military had flown into hurricanes as well but no amateur had done it- yet. "You'll be the only bird in the area for miles, except for the drop sonde planes. Good luck and when the storm is over, I'll see you on the 6:00 news."
"Look, Anne- I know what I'm doing. I'll fly through this and come back in one piece and I'll have my plane with me. We may have to patch it up but with a reinforcement of Pittsburgh's finest, there won't be a problem. I'll be back home having experienced the two greatest things that a guy can- the eye of a hurricane and the love of a woman." Javier said. Javier considered himself to be a thrill-seeker, a coyote who would do just about anything to brag to his grandsons someday that he did that impossible thing. His favorite book was "The Old Man and the Sea" and for all Javier was concerned, he was Santiago the Cuban fisherman who sought to capture a giant marlin simply because he could.
He entered the cockpit of his Piper Cub and took off, popping an antacid before the flight. (As a young pilot, he would often get sick while flying and the antacid kept him from throwing up during the flight. It had become a tradition for him.) The plane was packed with a parachute and an orange life-preserver vest in case of a splashdown. He brought a bottle of water, a ham sandwich and a Cuban cigar which he brought with him- he was already breaking the rules in flying through the eye of a storm. He could care less about the embargo. As he turned on the plane and lifted off the ground, Javier soon found the plane about 500 feet off the ground. He had taken some buspirone to combat anxiety while still being awake enough to fly the plane and started flying higher and higher.
Javier needed to reach the stratosphere, at about 30,000 feet to have a chance to "thread the needle". Failure here would mean his plane would dive directly into the eyewall, resulting in severe damage to the plane and Javier's certain death. After about ten minutes, he could no longer see Florida behind him and he could feel the circular rotation of the winds directly above the hurricane. Many times, the coyote's plane would lurch forward dangerously towards the eye wall, the most intense part of the storm. Out of the corner, he could see the National Weather Service planes dropping their sondes, which collected data on the storm. Javier's plane danced around the killing winds as deftly as a dogfighter would avoid enemy flak. After so many close calls, Javier found the area where the wind exerted the least force- the area above the eye. He dove down into the narrow column. The newswire said the hurricane was now sailing towards Miami at the rate of 100 mph. That was the speed with which Javier would fly without hitting either side of the eyewall. He set the plane for autopilot until he would see land.
As the coyote was 40 miles out at sea, he could afford to take about 25 minutes to look directly into the eye of the storm and the eyewall. He had received warnings from the NWS to leave the area immediately but he was not about to do that- Javier's plan was to ride the eye all the way back to Florida. The view of the so-called "amphitheatre of clouds" was amazing, a view that few mortals could even imagine. Thousands of cumulonimbus layered like seats in an arena were there to provide a vista that no one but certain AF pilots and NWS employees would ever see. And the calmness of the hurricane's eye was a radical departure from what was going in the ey's boundary- here at the center of this storm, bereft of air pressure, there were no winds to speak of at all. But Javier knew that outside the eye, the winds were raging at 120 mph., soon to be disfiguring the Sunshine State with their incredible force. And when the coyote looked at the contrast in the weather between the eye and the storm which surrounded it, he thought of the storm clouds raising and lowering like pistons in a rotating spiral-shaped machine.
"Rising, falling at Force Ten. They twist the world and ride the wind", the coyote thought out loud, as he carefully piloted his craft in the eye. Looking at the serene inside of the hurricane whose dance of destruction was as savage as a wild animal but as graceful a figure skater, gave Javier an indescribable feeling of awe at nature. This was what he had lived for and if he could return to civilization alive, he would have experinced the ultimate thrill. The universe was indifferent to mortal strivings but Javier was determined to beat Nature this day and enjoy what it had to offer. Javier was Santiago, Hemingway's fisherman in "The Old Man and the Sea" and the experience of being inside a hurricane would be his marlin, his great catch to brag about for future generations. And as he looked around at the bowl-shaped depression in the clouds, the eye itself, the coyote could sense a powerful and mighty force, as though the hurricane itself was alive and in spite of its violent nature had welcomed this coyote into its center. This force made Javier feel as though he had entered into much more than just a hurricane but something more sacred.
After some moments of reflection, Javier then turned his focus on to something more urgent- escaping this hurricane alive. Javier's only choice was to make his Piper Cub, which had been modified to land at sea shoot straight up for a couple of thousand feet until he was above the eye wall. The plane went straight upward for thousands of feet dodging the same winds that were there when Javier entered the eye. Now, the time came for him to glide at that same altitude for a few minutes as the storm passed by, which he did. From his perch above the storm, he watched as Alex declared war on Florida. Slowly, he began his descent to the coast, where Javier would land at an airfield near Daytona Beach, giving the storm remnants a wide berth to clear and also giving him and his plane a chance to re-fuel. (As it turned out, Miami was the focus of this hurricane and only a few moderate rainstorms occurred up the coast.)
The coyote's landing was picture-perfect and he got out of the plane to find a news reporter there. Apparently, his wife had betrayed the secret of his thrill-seeking to the local media. He would have a word with her. Behind the jaguar reporter, sat a cop waiting to arrest him. But when he told the officer the story, the cop let him go.
"I guess if you were dead, that would have been your punishment. But I just don't have the heart to throw the book at an adventurer like you." For the next few days, Javier would soak up the attention before going to Jacksonville to pick up food and supplies for the hurricane-wrecked city of Miami. As it turned out, Fred Johnson would be his new employer in sending Miami rice, fuel, and clean water. Anne would tell Javier how much she loved him so long as he never tried so anything so stupid ever again and the two coyotes had the most romantic weekend you can in a hurricane-ravaged city, each one thankful that the other was alive.