by Andrew Mayne
I think everything is fine – on the inside. Out there, not so much.
It's time to go before some macho cop or kill-crazy Russian decides to play chicken with me.
I pull back the throttle and listen to the engines roar.
It's a good sound.
A reassuring sound.
I forget the world around me and pretend I'm sitting at our old computer hutch about to take to the sky.
34
THE CAPTAIN
TAKING off in a 777 by yourself is no easy feat. Had I stumbled into a 747, I would have probably died on takeoff trying to jump between the flight engineer station behind the co-pilot seat while handling the throttle with my toes.
This still takes all my attention because I don't get a do-over if I forget a flap or something.
Besides pancaking into the ground, my other concern is smashing my plane into one of the many other jets currently in holding patterns waiting for ground control to tell them when they can land.
Ideally, I'd like to maintain radio silence, but I kind of sort of morally need to tell them to clear a path.
I'm sure the pissed off French pilots have told them by now that some asshole American stole their plane. I need to convince them that I don't plan on slamming it into a building – hijacking used to be so much easier before they were afraid terrorists were going to use the planes as weapons.
After I gain altitude I put on the headset and key in the mic to talk to air traffic control's main channel.
"Rio, this is..." I look for a label above the radio with the airplane's registration number. "...N9987IF. Please clear a path between Rio and LAX. There are hostages onboard."
I shut the radio off. It wasn't exactly the most professional radio call of my life, but they can figure out the rest.
If I stay on the channel and let them talk to me, they'll try to convince me to land or tell me that I'm about to be shot down, blah blah blah.
I did enough flight training to know that the worst situation on the ground is when you have no idea what their intentions are.
Right now they're panicking because someone on this jet said there are hostages and then shut off the radio.
Sooner than later I'm going to have an escort of Brazilian, then Colombian and Mexican jets. Ultimately, at some point before I enter US airspace, I'm going to meet the most highly trained fighters in the world while somebody from the Pentagon makes a case to the President for or against shooting me down.
I really don't have much of a plan for that right now. Los Angeles is at the furthest limit of this plane's range. If I'd said New York City, I'd probably get shot down without a blink.
That may still happen. I can make up destinations all I want, but at some point I'm going to actually have to land. If they haven't killed me by then, I'm going to have one hell of a welcome reception on the ground that's going to be a little more focused than the fiasco I just left in Rio.
Strangely, I'm the calmest I've been since this whole thing began. Or maybe it's not so strange. Flying is the one thing I'm good at. Worrying about all the little details like cabin pressure, fuel lines and did I retract the – FUCK! – landing gear.
Focus, David.
If I make it back to America, they probably won't extradite me to Russia. Our two countries have never seen eye to eye about that. I'll just spend the rest of my life in a Federal penitentiary if Capricorn's boogeymen don't kill me first.
If child molesters are the lowest of the low in prison, where does a guy who stole a spaceship and a passenger jet in one day rank? That'll have to give me some street cred, right? If that can't keep me from being someone's bitch, what else can a guy do?
I reach a cruising altitude of 33,000 feet. It'd be no problem to take this thing higher because there's nobody onboard, but that might signal the fact that there ain't no hostages.
I'm sure the airline already has their lawyers arguing with the insurance company over coverage in the event I get brought down.
Speaking of hostages...
I put the plane on autopilot and climb out of the cockpit – basically the dumbest thing you can do when you're flying an airplane like this by yourself – short of flying an airplane like this yourself.
I run down the aisle and start closing window shades in the front, then race to the back and close some at the rear. There are 100 windows on this thing. I'll be over San Diego by the time I close them all. I just shut enough to make it look like I'm hiding hostages.
All I need is one hotshot Brazilian pilot to fly next to the plane and notice there's nobody in the back and just one jerk in the front and the math problem of whether or not to shoot me down will get a lot easier.
Would that be an easier question if they knew who was flying? An hour ago there was a rumor that I was involved in the stadium shooting, but my actual whereabouts was unknown.
The fact that a jet just got stolen from the runway in the middle of a gun battle in the same city where David Dixon, astronaut-pirate, tried to land his spaceship, couldn't have gone unnoticed by the entire planet.
I can imagine some talking head on television news pointing out that, "Well, he is a pilot..."
Wonderful. I wish this bird had satellite television so they can explain to me why the Russian kill team and the Brazilian cops decided to shoot at each other.
Was it friendly fire? Or are there two kinds of Russians after me? The ones that just want to arrest me and kill me and ones that want to kill me before the ones who want to arrest me can kill me?
This is kind of stressful. Flying a 777 by myself I can cope with. Figuring international conspiracies is above my pay grade.
I poke my head into the cockpit to make sure that I'm not about to run right into a mountain then stick my nose in the galley because food is my drug of choice.
Holy cow! There he is, saluting me!
He may be called Capitaine on this French plane, but he was always an imposter wearing commander stripes anyway. It doesn't matter. He's an old friend whether you call him Capitaine Crounchie or Cap'n Crunch and I've got a dozen boxes of his sugary treasure.
Besides flying a 777 by yourself and leaving the cockpit, you should also never take a large bowl of milk and cereal and eat it over the controls – but hey, that's how I roll.
35
CO-PILOT
AS I EAT my fifth serving of Cap'n Crunch, a JAS 39 Gripen, a delta-wing attack and reconnaissance plane made by Saab, flies about a hundred feet to the port side of my cockpit and the navigator aims a huge camera lens right at me.
I'd been expecting this. It was only a matter of time before the Brazilians sent the air force to intercept me.
Right now the only way I can keep anything resembling an upper hand is by manipulating their uncertainty. I took a flight attendant's apron from the galley and made it into an improvised balaclava. It appears real enough, but smells like burnt coffee.
I just don't want them looking through the window and seeing dumb old David Dixon flying a plane all by his lonesome.
While I can ignore the radio, if the pilot of the Gripen decides to start flashing me Morse code, they would expect David Dixon to be able to figure out what they're saying.
Commercial airline pilots don't have to know it – they just use a manual – an astronaut pilot like myself is expected to understand a variety of low-bandwidth communications methods.
Once they know they can talk to me, they'll start getting into my head. If I had to bet on me or some terrorist negotiator who has dealt with dozens of high-stakes situations, my money is on him. I'm not cut out for this.
All they have to do is get my mom on the phone and have her yell at me that I'm grounded and I'm done for.
Oh, god. My mother. She's the principal of a middle school. I called her on the way to the base, waking her up, and told her that I was finally going into space.
That's when she said she'd have the whole school watch the launch.
Jesus.
What do you th
ink of your hero now, kids? What do you think of your son, mom?
You know what? Let's not worry about that right now. My primary concern is the Brazilian jet next to the cockpit and the two far off blinking lights on either side that have started shadowing me.
Russian MiGs? I'm still too far out of range of their Venezuelan air base, but they have access out of Bolivia...
Capricorn said they would try to shoot me down when I was in the spaceship. Would they do the same to a French passenger jet ostensibly loaded with people?
I'm real glad I took the time to close some of the windows. My claim of hostages won't stand up to the claim of the pilot whom I stole the plane from.
I hope that while he's insisting the plane is empty, the authorities are nervous that the hijacker may have snuck some onboard – hell they have to know it's me by now, the pilots would have pointed to my photo and said that's the asshole.
All the more reason not to talk to them. I'd crumble if they asked to speak to a hostage.
"Well...um...they're in the bathroom right now..."
BOOM! And they shoot me from the sky.
"What would you do, Cap'n?" I ask the smiling face I tore from the cereal box and stuck to the co-pilot's chair.
Oh crap, they probably got a photo of him too.
Wonderful. Maybe I should find some Rice Crispies and recruit Snap, Crackle and Pop into my terrorist organization?
Let them figure out the political significance of that.
I ignore my escorts and decide to worry about how I'm going to land and not die or spend my life in prison.
Although I told them my destination was LAX – realizing the panic that's probably causing, I now think that was a mistake, um, oh well, next time I'll figure out a better solution. I can't actually land there unless I have some brilliant master plan to evade the most highly trained terrorist response teams in the world.
Fun fact: The Los Angeles Police Department actually invented SWAT. And I chose there of all places.
Of course, it'll be the FBI team that probably launches the assault. They have actual airplane fuselages that they train on practicing these scenarios. But they won't even need to board the plane. One sniper in an elevated position will be able to fire an armor piercing round straight through the cockpit window before I even power down the engines.
Nope. There's no good outcome in that situation unless I get on the radio and announce that I'm ready to surrender.
And that will lead to another scenario without a good outcome.
What's my story? That some guy on a broken sat phone told me to do this? The plastic square with the Russian letters? What will that prove, other than the fact that I stole something from the K1 space station?
That's all assuming I can trust the government folks that handle this. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but Capricorn's warning that there's someone very highly placed working with the Russians isn't out of the question. All it takes is one CIA chief to make something up and nobody will believe me. I mean clearly I'm a lunatic.
I take the pilot charts out and start considering my options. Obviously LAX is out of the question if I'm going to try to avoid arrest or a rapid lead injection.
Bailing out of the airplane would be an option if I had a parachute and was willing to smash $400 million-dollars-worth of aircraft into some hopefully uninhabited area – only to find out the black square in my pocket contained evidence of some really minor infraction, like stealing satellite television on the K1.
So...no jumping out.
I have to land this thing in a place where the cops can't get to me quickly.
I run my finger along South and Central America searching for a potentially friendly country that might give me asylum. All I realize is that I know next to nothing about international politics.
I need some other option besides a diplomatic one.
A little spot on the map catches my eye.
There's a thought...
But to make it work I'll have to crash this plane.
36
DEEP SIX
LOOKING at the charts and tracing my route to my presumed destination of Los Angeles, I have a very scary realization and inspiration. Whether or not those twinkling lights in the distance are Russian MiGs flying out of Bolivia, I know for sure I'm going to get a real Ruskie escort when I pass over international water by Bolivia and Venezuela. I'll be well within range of anything flying out of Caracas and Cuba.
They're probably not going to bring me down over land – even the Amazonian jungle, but open water is a different matter.
The Russians haven't been shy about doing that kind of thing in the past. I'll never make it to Mexican airspace if I keep this course.
I need to get them off my back and hopefully out of range. And out of range may not even be a possibility if they have a Tupolev Tu-160 long-range bomber anywhere near Central America. That can go further than I can and carries cruise missiles that adds another 1,500 miles to its striking distance.
To get them off my back, I have to do something really, really stupid.
The upside is that if it works, they'll think I'm dead, as will the American and Mexican authorities.
I don't know how long the ruse will work, but it might be enough to get me onto a different path and confuse the situation enough that I get past their air defenses.
I check the autopilot and set a timer so I can steal a nap. Thankfully, this bird has enough alarms and alerts that I'm able to sleep reasonably confident that I'm not about to smash into a mountain.
I wake up two hours later as the plane begins to jostle from some turbulence. Nothing major, but probably a good time to get up.
Once I'm through it, I let myself use the bathroom, although I leave the door open in the event I have to run to the controls.
We're heading towards the Colombian border and I'm sure they're going to want to send their own planes to greet me.
The Brazilian Gripen left a while ago – as did the twinkling lights. My radar doesn't show anything close, but a military jet flying at a high altitude could shadow me without my knowledge. This thing is more useful for collision avoidance and weather.
It'll take me less than an hour to fly over Colombia. After that, I'm over the ocean and fair game to anyone that wants to shoot me down.
I run through my hare-brained scheme one more time. Yep, it's a dumb plan. Yep, I'm going to go through with it.
Two minutes before I reach the coast I turn the plane almost due north.
To everyone tracking me this has to have come as some kind of surprise. For some random reason I'm now heading away from my stated course.
For the Russians who are on an intercept path, this complicates things.
They'll be able to reroute, but this buys me a few extra minutes to get over international waters and do my really stupid thing...
I cut almost all my thrust and push the nose towards the sea.
I'm at 33,000 feet...
Now 32,000...
30,000...
25,000...
20,000...
15,000...
This is where it gets tricky.
Full throttle...
5,000...
I can see waves in the moonlight.
I'm probably going to die.
Pull out of the dive...wait for it...bank port!
I'm flying less than a hundred feet above the ocean and the plane is shaking like crazy.
This is not an optimum altitude but I keep going and keep turning.
I'm now heading south over Colombia, down an inlet.
If they're tracking me, I just dropped out of their radar right over the ocean. If this was any other commercial flight, the assumption would be that I just had some kind of disaster and the plane is now sinking into the waves.
However, that only buys me some confusion. While they're frantically trying to figure out where I went, I need to get out of their target zone.
This means flying ridiculously low o
ver the Rio Atrata and then banking back north once I'm on the other side of the continent – which will be very shortly.
I check my radar to see if anything is following me; everything looks clear. If I have any Russian escorts, their onboard radar would have lost me by now.
Satellite tracking would have been lost the moment I changed altitude and course. They can find me again if they have some idea where to look – that's why I plan to complicate things a bit for them.
After I cross Colombia at a ridiculously low altitude, sticking to the jungle, I take the plane north once I'm near the coast and go back to a slightly more respectable height.
Right now there are hundreds of passenger jets in the skies between here and the United States. To avoid crashing into them or having a bunch of panicked pilots report my position, I have to keep my jet out of their airspace.
While I can only stay low for so long on land before I start tripping all sorts of radar, if I do it over the ocean I'm less likely to raise any warning flags – but also equally likely to lose the plane in bad weather.
There's a very good reason pilots like to keep these things as high up as they can. Besides better fuel efficiency, the closer you are to ground the more difficult a plane is to control when the weather is less than perfect.
That means lots of turbulence for me and no more cereal breaks for a while.
I check the weather radar and spot a mildly nasty storm and steer right for it.
Controlling the plane is a bit of a bitch, but after an hour of stormy weather and wanting to throw up, I come out into some nice conditions near El Salvador.
Assuming everything worked – big assumption – I'm a thousand miles away from where they thought I was going to be at this point.
I should be able to cross Mexican airspace without too much trouble if I stay clear of the airports and the cities; basically acting like a drug smuggler.
Which is what I'm going to have to do if I want to enter the United States.
37
ESCORTS
WE PROTECT our nation's border through a variety of methods. There's our early warning systems – long range radar designed to see if there are enemy bombers heading their way. Some of these radar installations are ground-based, but our modern air defense relies heavily on airborne radar carried aloft by jets like the AWACS.