Highs And Lows Of An Air Force DV Mission
On April 14, 2004, I set out for my final overseas trip of my Air Force career in a C-37, a gleaming Gulfstream V. I had interviewed with Southwest Airlines one month earlier and was hoping to hear some results any day. Our eight-day trip retraced a lot of the same cities and bases I had flown to in October of 2001, the first trip after the 9/11 attacks. This time our customer was the new Special Operations (SOCOM) commander, Army General Doug Brown.
We made stops in Doha, Qatar, and Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, before flying over the mountain range into Bagram Air Base, 45 miles north of Kabul, Afghanistan. Employing a combat arrival technique at the time, we overflew the air base at 20,000 feet, then spiraled down, staying within the confines of the airfield in order to limit our potential exposure to shoulder-fired missiles or anti-aircraft gunfire. The base was a major installation for our Air Force and numerous coalition forces, with American F-16s and A-10s flying daily combat missions. After spending the night at Bagram Air Base, we departed the next day heading south towards Pakistan, before turning west towards Muscat, Oman, where I had flown KC-10 missions during Operation Desert Storm in 1991.
I got a job offer During My flight
As we flew over Pakistan, a datalink message arrived from our squadron duty officer telling me that someone from Southwest Airlines had called looking for me. I knew that had to be a good sign! With our satellite air phone on the aircraft, I called the squadron.
“Hey Dave. I thought you’d like to know that a lady named Mary called for you and asked you to call her back,” he said, passing along her Dallas office phone number. I thanked him for the message and told him that I’d return the call as soon as possible.
After hanging up, I told my copilot the news. He grinned and goaded me, “You should call her back right now.”
“You really think so?” I asked.
“Sure!” he replied.
I picked up the satellite-phone and dialed the 214-area code number. A lady from the Southwest People Department answered and said it was time for me to schedule a drug test. She couldn’t commit to the fact that I was hired, but this was the next step and meant that I had passed the interview process. Southwest was now wrapping up the final details before they could offer me a job.
I told her, “I’m currently out of the country, but I’ll take care of that as soon as I get back home.”
She asked, “Where are you right now?”
“Well, I’m currently flying over Pakistan,” I told her. Yes, I was showing off.
“Oh, that’s so cool!” she replied.
That was the end of a very happy but short conversation.
This was fulfilling the second part of my teenage dream. I told myself as a high school senior that I wanted to serve 20 years as an Air Force pilot and then fly for Southwest, my home-state airline.
An hour later, we landed at Seeb Airport, Muscat, Oman, for a night’s stay. The base had come a long way since the tent city of 1990 to 1991. The desert military installation now had hard-sided buildings, a vast collection of tan, rectangular single-story portable shelters, each with window air conditioners and generators humming away.
The next day, as our crew strolled around the crunchy gray gravel paths of the small base, I told an enlisted crew member that when she was nine I had lived for three months in one of fifty canvas tents alongside the runway.
High to a Low
That afternoon, on April 22, we departed for the westbound trip back to Florida. A few hours into the trip, in the dark skies over the Atlantic the general’s aide, an Army major, came back up into the cockpit, yelling, “Son of a bitch!”
I turned around, asking, “What’s wrong?”
“Pat Tillman has just been killed.” he answered.
This was the night a firefight took the life of Pat Tillman, the Arizona Cardinal’s National Football League player who walked away from millions of dollars to become an Army Ranger immediately after the 9/11 attack. The unfortunate deadly shooting later turned out to be from our own troops, but on this still night over the ocean nobody knew the details of his death. Everyone thought it was an enemy ambush on our forces.
This was a somber, low point of a roller-coaster two-day period. What had started with the excitement of my potential hiring with Southwest Airlines now concluded with the death of a true American hero. Our cockpit was very quiet as we flew westward over the dark ocean.
