The pilot made a sharp left when he first saw it.
He immediately checked his coordinates to make sure nothing was seriously amiss. As he was doing so, the griffin appeared on top of his cabin, grabbing onto its front shield, and staring at him with blood-red eyes.
Pilots are trained thoroughly for unexpected situations, so luckily for him, panic didn't take over.
But fear did.
His reaction was to lean back as much as he could--a normal reaction and execute the manual. Radio Mayday.
But all his instruments were malfunctioning and turning wildly as the alert/danger sound completely invaded the calmness of the flight.
Everything was flashing red.
He's heard of instances like this one from the literature on the Bermuda Triangle and the Devil's Sea on the Pacific Ocean.
He began to sweat profusely and pray this was just a dream.
It wasn't.
The griffin confirmed it by "directing" him to a new destination. The instructions were clear by the motion of its wing. Turn right and keep the course, the eyes giving a sense of assurance on the whole matter.
His instruments relented and behaved normally again when he made the requested change. By now, his situation was obvious. A mythological beast was hijacking him and there was nothing he could do about it.
He tried to think but he couldn't; he opened his cabin compartment to see a picture of his loved ones, wondering if he was ever going to see them again.
Suddenly, there was company. Two F-35s were flanking him. He'd never felt more relief in his life.
The communications were scrambled, nothing that was said was understandable to any practical degree. Just words without meaning because of the constant interruptions.
At least he wasn't alone.
The beast didn't seem to care. Its eyes were scanning the firmament and paid no attention to the extra company.
When it looked back at him, the glance was intense again and it made the same gesture with its wing as before.
Almost like saying, "Steady, lad, you're doing fine."
Still clinging to the cabin, the griffin finally seemed to have arrived at its destination and made the signal to land.
He checked latitude and map charts on the plane's computer screen and saw they were in Iraq.
In the middle of the desert on an abandoned air base.
They were all instructed to land there.
Since all options were limited, they opted to comply.
They landed safely with the creature still on top of the F-16.
It didn't take long for why they were there to be revealed.
The screens on all three planes flashed the same document.
An MIT research paper disclosed an ancient location where 35 griffins were buried in a sand storm in 327 BCE. However they couldn't finalize the paper as the university cut their funding. So the precise location was still unknown.
That was the reason for this griffin to be. It pinpointed the site with the utmost accuracy.
The idea was to let them see the light of day again.
His mission accomplished, it left just like it appeared having helped humanity find its buried treasures.
The rest was up to us.
YOU ARE READING
Terror in the Sky
TerrorA pilot struggles not to panic when a mythological creature, a griffin, suddenly controls his F-16. What ensued was the stuff that nightmares are made of, but he was completely awake.
