I just had to smile. Looked up into the clouds and sky and smiled a sincere prayer of gratitude. The Lord had gotten me out of a predicament that, up until that moment, I hadn't realized how deep I was in. The skies over war-torn Afghanistan were a little clearer, the golden clouds reflecting the setting sun...just a bit more beautiful. It was a very peaceful flight home after those few tense seconds.
With all our other concerns: avoiding the threat from the ground, navigation, communications, and our rush to reach the patient on time, we were less than precise in monitoring our fuel status. We knew approximately how fast we were burning through our fuel, but the patient was at a remote base and it took us almost precisely an hour to reach him. Once we picked up to head home, the math started falling into place. Burning 900 lbs of fuel per hour....we only have 1100 left...took us an hour to get here....uh.oh. Do you gamble with your crew and aircraft on 200 lbs of fuel. Just how empty can you go before the engines flame out? Hmm...glanced at the GPS. This high tech gizmo says that covering the same distance will take us....30 min!?!?!? What do you trust? The machine or your infant experience?
It was that moment that I broke into a smile. Did a little more 'calculus' and discovered we had a 20-30 knot tailwind and were getting home in half the time! I had only considered the wind direction momentarily as we approached the LZ and searched for the green smoke signal. Thinking back now, somebody shifted the prevailing winds in my favor- before I knew I needed it. All logic tells me that, based on the direction we landed, we should have had a tail wind enroute to and a headwind returning from the LZ. Simple blessings...
The crisis was further averted when our chase aircraft, an Air Force HH-60 (=heavy, with mini-guns and tons more electronic toys) - which had burned through twice as much fuel trying to keep up with us- required an emergency detour to a refuel point just off our route. Perfect timing.