drunk and wanting to kill Neutron Silva, is peacefully sleeping on a folding chair though the din.
Asshole-in-chief, Captain Bob Foreskeen has been pinching nipples at random, mine included. Warning him to cut it out, warning him again (what’s that all about?), finally I have to deck him, to the approval of all. Perhaps in cowardly retribution, he orders three hundred dollars of cheese platters up to the party, and when it arrives, he signs the name and room number of some girl flight attendant.
We all find out about this a few days later when the girl is in tears. The hotel management is calling all our rooms to try to find out who actually did it, and Foreskeen is trying to get Al Quine and I to believe that the culprit was Newt Silva.
Thankfully, Miguel, our gay purser’s Caballero, identifies Foreskeen as the culprit; Miguel actually saw that asshole sign the check when the cheese arrived. Almost fucking us out of a very good deal with the Sofitel ( the use of a crewroom, free coffee, fridge, free movies,a and so on ) Foreskeen winds up paying the entire tab with a credit card… hopefully it was one of his own.
The young lady flight attendant, the original butt of the fromage fraud, brought a gentlemen friend along with her for that week in Paris. Apparently, she was no longer enamored by his company, since in honor of her liberation from her credit problems, she removed all her garments in the crew lounge ( so long as we all did the same ), and she allowed Quine, Newtron and Ito study a very interesting mole on her ass. Merry Christmas!
Engine Failure
Next day I’m paired up with the mean-prick of a Captain, PsychoSaroyin again. He is aptly named for his Jekyll-Hyde tendencies. We will be doing a “turn” to Mombai (Bombay), a long day, about five hours in each direction, and believe me I’m not looking forward to it.
Saroyin hates everybody and everything. As we meet up in the lobby this morning, there’s no greeting And unlike the rest of us who try to be friendly with the cabin crew, Psycho just walks right through them. No “hello’s,” no eye-contact. I usually hang back and apologize to the cabin crew on his behalf, after he disappears up the air stairs.
Herr-Lippi sees me out to the hotel bus, and as I’m about to board with Saroyin. “Hey Steve , know what Psycho told me his Golden Rule of life is?”
“Gee, Mark, what’s that?” I’m not very happy.
“Psycho’s Rule Numero Uno states that If Psycho sees a blind man on the street he kicks him, because why should he be kinder than God?”
“Thanks, Mark, makes sense.” Mark laughs and waves goodbye to me as I board the bus.
The day is shorter than I think it will be. Taking off out of Jeddah, the # four engine blows, engine parts explode through the compressor and turbine, spraying the runway and the dessert with fragments. Its my flight leg, I’m flying, unconsciously my left foot has put in enough rudder to adjust for adverse yaw, and we’re on a correct runway heading, level, but barely climbing out, with a temperature inversion taking it’s toll on our available power.
The cockpit is silent. “Positive rate, gear up,” I say. Saroyin brings up the gear, announcing into the radio “Jeddah Tower, Saudia four-five… we’ve lost an engine! Request straight ahead and level off at 800’ AGL.”
“Anything you want, Saudia four-five, you own the airspace.” Thank God its a Brit Controller on the radio.
At eight hundred feet AGL, I call “altitude hold.” I level off, allow the speed to build up, and request the flaps be brought up on schedule. Now the airplane is “clean,” gear and flaps up and I start a gentle climb, calling “3000’ alt sel, max continuous thrust…In-flight engine failure checklist.” Everything is going textbook, the hours of sim-emergency drill has kicked in automatically. The Captain and Flight Engineer turn off the fuel to the engine and complete the checklist. I fly the plane and handle the radio.
Mikey Palamino, Jr., “Baby Mike,” our engineer, has already calculated that our dump time is twelve minutes. That is, since our take-off weight far exceeds the structural limits of our max gross landing weight (on this flight), we must dump fuel in order to quickly as possible get us down to a structurally safe landing weight. Dumping fuel at a rate of about 5000 pounds /minute, “Baby Mike” tells us we need twelve minutes dump time. I level off at 3000’ and call for the ‘after take-off checklist. “Psycho and Mikie finish the “after take-off check", and Saroyin gets back on the radio.
“Jeddah Tower, Saudia four-five needs vectors to a dumping area.”
We complete the dump, which actually, at the speed were going, vaporizes the kerosene into the air. We complete the ‘descent checklist,’ the ‘landing check-list’ and we come back in for a ‘normal’ landing at King Abdul Aziz Airport, that is, Jeddah.
The 747 flies great with one of its four engines gone, depending on its weight of course. Losing an engine, maxxed out during take off (just past V1) is the tricky part. Once the plane is ‘clean,’ and if its light enough, I’ve flown 747’s with two engines gone on the same wing.
Truly, “Psycho” Saroyin and “Baby” Palamino have performed perfectly. We all acted in concert, knowing what to do, and what to expect from each other. Our flight to Mumbai was cancelled, and we hit the bus back to the hotel.
Of course, everybody already knew about our “air return.” Guys swapping horror stories of their own experiences.
“Cheated death again,” announces Saroyin.
The beer’s on me all night,” calls out Herr-Lippi, bringing the crowd to a howl, since there is no legal alcohol in the sandbox, The land of no!”
The Jakarta Haii-The Land of Yes
The senior guys bid the Jakarta Hajj. Whereas Jeddah is called the land of no (no beer, no pussy), Jakarta is called the land of yes.” Guys wait nine months to get back to Jakarta, where the alcohol flows, and the pussy is plentiful. The cherry on top, is how cheap it all is.
During stable times, Suharto kept control by subsidizing rice, gasoline and public transportation, the Rupe” (the Indonesian Rupiah) was always about 2000 Rupes to the dollar. A great meal, at a fancy restaurant, would run about $10 US Dollars. The “ Kupu-Kupu-Malaam” (literally “Night Butterflies") cost nothing (usually), just a night in a five-star hotel bed, breakfast, and cab-fare home.
This year, Indonesia was in turmoil. A few months before our arrival, Suharto had played the highest stakes, single-hand of poker in history with the World Bank, and had won (temporarily). He was able to blackmail 35 billion dollars (about the amount that he, his family, and cronies had stolen ) from the International Monetary Fund, but the Rupe still plunged, now trading, at the time of our arrival from 8-15,000 Rupes to the dollar. That meant that instead of being millionaires by Indonesian standards, we Americans were now billionaires.
A meal for two of lobster, French wine, Cuban cigars and Irish coffee, at Jakarta’s best restaurant, still cost about 100,000 Rupes. Last year that would have been about $50. Now, it was less than $10. A massage and a blow-job, quickly ordered to your room with a simple phone call, cost three or four dollars.
The “Breakfast Club” was in full session. “Bubba and the Ball Walkers” were teasing Lynn Barclay’s Bottom Feeders” about who wound up with the ugliest whom last night. It was our day off, but Johnny Rivers kept checking his watch. I was a late arrival at the table. “Johnny,” I ask, “why do you keep looking at your watch? Are you flying today?”