Lincoln Three

By Bill Savidge

Air flows up the 300 foot cliff at the edge of La Jolla’s Torrey Pines Glider Port, sucked inland by rising desert temperatures.

“Good day for flying,” Allan says to his wife sitting at the edge of the wide lawn, her faded blue eyes and gray hair under a straw hat.

“Wish you’d act your age, Al. Seventy-five’s a bit much for hang-gliding.”

Allan ignores her remark, watches the grass runway. Every two or three minutes a hard-bodied man or woman gallops toward the ocean cliff, and then soars high, gliding in the up-welling air.

Brown pelicans ply the lifting currents, too.

“Look at ‘em, Dot.” She glances up from her book and nods.

Al loves pelicans, the way they fly; wings steady, long beaks poised for attack, then dive straight down into the water for a fish. They remind him of days as a fighter pilot in North Vietnam, diving straight down at the target through clouds of black bursts.

That day he got shot down, he can still hear the flight leader, “Lincoln Three, get back in formation.” But he couldn’t.

A silver Mig-21 gave him seven years in the Hanoi Hilton.

Three pelicans pass over the edge of the cliff.

“Look, Dot. Three of ‘em, perfect missing man formation.”

They both watch the three pelicans, wheeling in the rising salt air.

“I better get going, while the going’s good.”

Al thinks of his old Lincoln Flight. Thinks of all the memorial services, the three ship missing man formations.

We were good pilots, all four of us and I’m the last one still around. Well, I’ll make this flight for them.

Dorothy waves as Allan starts his take-off run. He lifts off, looks down at the beach down below, the brown rocky cliff, ocean blue as a sapphire, diamond edged by white breakers. Usually Al soars back and forth along the bluff’s edge, gaining altitude to extend his time aloft.

But then he sees the pelicans, the same three, same formation. Allan turns, follows the pelicans west, out to sea, turns back with them toward the beach, losing altitude. This is gonna be close, he thinks.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees the lead birds cold eye fixed on him, its dark dagger beak pointed, like a signal, toward the cliff. A gust hits Al’s Mylar wing.

A sudden stall, a fall head first into a rocky crevice a hundred feet above the sand. In that final momentary flash of blinding white, Al hears-feels-an urgent fleeting message: “Lincoln Three get back in formation!”

Dorothy looks up from her book, raises her arm to point.

“Look,” she says to the woman in the canvas chair beside her. “My husband Al, he should see that.

“Pelicans, his favorites - four of ‘em. All four-in perfect formation.”

* * *

The author is a retired AF fighter pilot with Korea and Vietnam combat. He has flown most everything from Mustangs to F-4s.