Senior Airman Jeremy Mulkey, the engineer, scans the horizon from his middle seat. A few seconds pass. The crew chief, Staff Sgt. Marc Maschhoff, is now on his feet, peering ahead for a black dot in the sky. Nobody now notices the grey plumes of smoke from fires burning in the fields toward the east, which just a few minutes ago had been such a topic of conversation.
All eyes are on the other side of the clouds, waiting for the German crew to emerge.
The load on this mission is a compilation of the operation itself. Today's load is typical of the variety of people and supplies the crews have been hauling. The one thing that stands out is seeing how all the training we've done has prepared us for these missions. For them, this is their first taste of a major contingency operation. In all, there are about 400 U.S. troops in Darwin or Dili.