by Ward, Steve
“6,000 feet!”
With poor visibility common on hot summer days, it was difficult to gauge distance. As she scanned across the ocean, all she could see was haze. No horizon, just a continuum of gray mist from ocean to sky. Visibility was less than five miles, and there was little if any contrast. With the autopilot off, she immediately realized it was exactly the same “instrument” condition that caused young Kennedy to lose control of his airplane. Without contrast between sky and ground, there was no way to maintain spatial orientation. Christina strained her eyes to look for any sign of land, a fishing boat or a ship. When she moved her eyes back to the instruments, she could hardly believe what she saw. The artificial horizon indicated a diving, steep turn to the left, but she felt as though they were flying straight and level.
“Oh my God, I’m losing it!” she yelled. Forced to concentrate on nothing but the instruments, she remembered her training on “recovery from unusual attitudes.” First she turned the yoke hard right, rolling the wing-symbols level. Struggling to pull up the nose, she could feel the Gs slamming her butt into the seat as the girls screamed. Finally the nose came back up to the horizon. She had to stare at the instrument to hold the plane straight and level.
“You guys look for land or anything out there. I gotta watch the instruments to keep us upright,” she commanded.
“There’s something out the left side,” Heather grabbed her shoulder.
Quickly moving her eyes back to the sea, Christina saw the outline of one small island. She very carefully used the instruments to make a standard rate, descending turn in that general direction. With the image of the island coming into focus, it was much easier to remain oriented.
Billy yelled, “5,000!”
They still had a few minutes. She begged her friends to calm down and start looking for anything in the airplane that might help keep them alive long enough to be rescued: food, water, life jackets, flares, mirrors, seat cushions, flashlights.
“There’s a raft and survival gear in the luggage compartment,” Billy volunteered. “I’ll be in charge of getting it out when the time comes.”
“That’s very brave of you, Billy. Thanks a lot,” she replied.
“But, you got to give me the key. It’s on the key chain there. The luggage door is locked.”
The key in the ignition was useless to her now. She pulled it out and gave it to him. “Put those in your pants pocket, so you don’t lose them when we hit the water.”
“4,000.”
“Rule number seven, get on the emergency frequency and call Mayday. Report tail number, location and the number of souls on board.” She asked Billy to dial in 121.5 on the radio. She cleared her throat and picked up the microphone.
“Mayday, Mayday, is anyone on this freq?”
Dead silence! She turned up the volume on the radio, and pulled out the squelch.
Reading the aircraft tail number off the panel she said, “Mayday, Mayday, this is November Two Eight Niner Niner Kilo, five souls aboard. Going down one hundred fifty miles short of Exuma in route from West Palm Beach.” That’ll give them a line.
“3,000 feet.”
Repeating the call several times, she finally realized the auxiliary microphone she was holding wasn’t plugged into its socket underneath the instrument panel. Like many pilots, Hank used the microphone in his headset and rarely touched the one hanging on the panel. Now below 3,000 feet, she feared they were too low to be picked up by controllers. She plugged in the mike, repeated the distress call one more time and threw it on the floor.
“2,000.”
No time for radios now. Gotta get this baby down. Remembering the words of Frugeson:
A lot of pilots die because they panic and freeze up in an Emergency. They stall into a spin. You want to return to the ground horizontally, not vertically. If you have to put it in the woods, make sure you point the nose between the trees.
Trees weren’t the problem. She wished he had given some instruction on ditching in water. Maybe he did, but she didn’t remember. Should the landing gear be up or down? Should she land fast and try to skip over the waves or plop it in slow with a full stall? Should she land across the waves or parallel? Too many unknowns. Let’s get back to Rule number one, fly the airplane, fly the airplane, fly the airplane, Christina silently repeated her mantra.
“1,000 feet!” Billy shrieked.
Straining to examine the island ahead, Christina noticed a small stretch of white beach. It looked a lot more inviting than the water. Might be able to reach it. If not, I’ll ditch nearby. Again she told her passengers to buckle down tight and secure any loose objects. Then she remembered Rule Eight.
“Rule number eight, put something in the door frame to avoid it jamming shut on impact. Billy, take off your belt. Crack the door open, stick your belt into it. That’ll keep it open when we hit. We may have to get out fast.”
As she tried to milk the last bit altitude, the final step in her “engine out” training came to mind.
“Rule nine, turn off everything electrical, anything that might start a fire.” She flipped off the Master and asked Billy to turn off all the switches he could find.
“500.”
Christina tensed, pumped with adrenaline. This is it. Come to Jesus. She decided to put the landing gear down, pulling the lever out and shoving it down hard. They were too high to get down on the beach, so she passed to the south and turned steeply back to the north. She stood on the right rudder, rolled in full left aileron and pushed the yoke forward, just as she had been trained to side-slip for a rapid descent.
“100 feet.”
The stall warning pierced the stale air of the cockpit, so she shoved the nose down toward the beach and yanked up the flaps, all three clicks. The white sand came up fast, so she hauled back on the yoke and slammed the Saratoga down hard at 70 knots. She struggled with the rudder to keep it pointed down the beach. They bounced into the air and crashed back down with a bone-jarring thud. Her head snapped, but she kept her hands on the controls. A rocky cliff loomed dead ahead, so she closed her eyes, stood on the brakes and plowed through dry sand to a stop. When she opened them, there was a huge boulder no more than ten feet in front of the airplane.
“Zero” Billy swiveled his head. “Shit! We’re alive!”
Silence followed, then a loud cheer from the backseat when the girls realized they were down safely, without a scratch, and the plane seemed to be in one piece.
Christina slumped in her seat and tried to breathe. Once again, the comforting words of John Furgeson floated through her thoughts:
Any landing you can walk away from is a good one!
Billy looked at her with red eyes and asked, “Okay, miss genius, you got us down, now what do we do?”
“Did my part,” she joked with a smile. “Think I’ll take the rest of the day off.”
The girls eyed the dead man between them, and Heather said, “Yuck, let’s get the hell out of here.” Christina and Billy followed. They all stood together on the sandy beach with hugs thankful to be alive. Billy looked back toward the plane with tears in his eyes.
“Christina,” Heather said, “I can’t believe you got us down in one piece. Girl, you’re something.”
“It wasn’t pretty, but we got the job done. Billy was a big help.” She gave him a hug and kissed him on the cheek. “I can assure you there was a lot of luck involved. The Big Guy was definitely watching.”
Heather said softly, “I wonder how long we’ll be here?”
Chapter Eleven
Christina had an eerie feeling as she scanned their new environs. There was an aura of serenity she had never experienced. “Shhhh. . .be quiet for a minute. Can you hear it?” She put her forefinger over her lips, and the others started to quiet down.
The group hushed as each one strained to listen. For the first time in their young lives there was no traffic, no birds, no children, no TV, no music. They heard absolutely nothing, nothing but drop-dead silence. They w
ere alone, and the silence was as deafening as it was terrifying. It was as if they had just landed on a mysterious planet. Like some kind of slow motion group dance, they all twisted around looking in all directions in awe of the desolate surroundings.
“Too weird, a vast nothingness,” Christina said.
“Not much of an island, is it?” Jessica said softly.
The island seemed to be long and narrow, but there wasn’t much to it. A scattering of limestone cliffs were the only structures elevated, and the island was almost flat. One of thousands of similar atolls in the Bahamas, it was large enough to support some vegetation and scrub brush, but small enough to be of no interest to developers. It was surrounded by a scattering of coral reefs, but no other land could be seen in the distance.
“Could be a lot worse,” Billy pointed out the bright side. “We could be out there splashing around in a blow-up raft.”
“Or trapped in a crumpled airplane.” Jessica shuddered at the thought.
“Christina, any idea where we are?” Heather asked.
“Jessica, give me your map. I know we were one hour out of Exuma at 145 knots.” She drew an imaginary line from Miami to Great Exuma and used the scale on the map to estimate the distance using the end of her finger. “Bad news. That would put us right here in the middle of the ocean, between Andros and the Exuma chain. Not too surprising this island isn’t on the map. There are thousands of these little sand-piles.”
“What do you think happened to the plane?” Jessica was curious.
“I can’t understand why a perfectly good engine would stop so suddenly without warning,” Christina stated as she walked around the plane. Opening the cover and looking into one wing tank, she saw it was bone dry.
“That son-of-a-bitch didn’t put enough fuel on board to make our destination.”
“Shut up!” Billy shouted. “Don’t talk that way about Pop.” He started crying. “He wouldn’t make a mistake like that. I helped him, and he always looks in both tanks to make sure the fuel is at the right level.”
Following her instinct, she walked around the plane and looked in the other wing. It was full to the tabs. “What the hell? Plenty of fuel over here.”
“Did you remember to switch tanks?” Billy queried.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I wondered why you didn’t ask me where the fuel tank selector was. I thought you knew what you were doing. You said you were a pilot.”
“What fuel tank selector?”
Billy walked over to the plane, opened the door and pointed to a big red lever on the left side of the cockpit. The pointer was clearly on the right tank, the empty one.
“Looks like you ran all the fuel out of the right tank.”
Christina’s knees buckled as she suddenly realized what had happened. She pulled the manual out from a side pocket and read about the fuel system. “The Cessna I’ve been training in flows fuel from both tanks at the same time.” Pointing at the manual, “This plane requires the pilot to mechanically select the tank feeding gas to the engine.”
“Well that’s great!” Jessica cheered her on. “All we have to do is switch tanks, crank up the engine and get the hell out of here.”
“No, there is a problem.” Christina looked behind her down the beach. “The book says we need 2,200 feet of hard runway to get this plane off the ground. There’s just no way we have a half-mile of beach here. We’ll never get airborne, especially on a hot day with minimal lift. Billy, would you please walk off the length of that beach and tell me how many paces, just to make sure?”
“So what do we do then?” Heather said with a troubled look. Her eyes were wide with alarm and beginning to fill with tears.
“Listen,” Christina said in a comforting tone. “Don’t worry. Hank was on an IFR flight plan. I’m sure they’ve been tracking us all the way, even without radio contact. They’re frantically searching for us as we speak. Worst case, I expect they’ll be here in a couple of hours. It would probably be a good idea to pull up some driftwood and start a fire, then they’ll have no trouble spotting us from the air.”
“Don’t you remember?” cried Heather with a worried tone. “They didn’t even look for Kennedy’s plane until the next day when someone called the airport wondering where they were.”
“That’s different,” she replied. “He was a private pilot, flying under Visual Flight Rules without a flight plan, and he wasn’t talking to anyone. I know Hank filed IFR, and I can assure you they’re looking for us. From our radar track, they’ll know the general area. Now, Billy, could you round up some wood and get us a nice smoky fire going?”
“Okay, but I’ll need the lighter. It’s in my granddad’s pocket.”
She wasn’t too happy about the prospect of handling a dead person, but they had no choice. All four went to the grueling task of pulling Hank out of the plane. They drug his limp body across the beach and put it in the shade of a big rock.
Heather and Jessica put on their swimsuits to deal with the afternoon heat. To kill time they started wading around in the shallows. Every time a plane flew over, they would group together, wave their arms and watch for any signs they had been discovered. After a couple of hours, they had seen a few planes, but none seemed to be searching. Christina tried the radios again without success and began to wonder how long this would take. She figured once the controllers saw the plane disappear from the radar screen, search and rescue would be mobilized. Assuming they went down in the water, one would expect the greatest urgency. She was certain that Hank filed IFR, because she heard him call it in.
“Anybody hungry?” Heather asked. “I’ve got a bag of double-stuffed Oreo cookies in my case if anyone’s interested.” She broke out the treat, and they devoured the entire bag in a matter of seconds. It was as if they hadn’t eaten anything in a week.
“Boy, am I thirsty,” Jessica chuckled. “Anybody got a cold glass of milk?”
“There’s some bottled water in the survival gear,” Billy offered as he went back to the plane. He pulled out the boxes and started going through them. “Eight bottles of water,” he reported, passing out two each.
“You’re an angel,” Heather said. She unscrewed one bottle and started gulping it down.
“Hold it!” shouted Christina. “I would go slow with that if I were you. We don’t know how long it’ll take.”
“Thought you said worst case was a couple of hours?” Heather complained.
“Yeah, I know what I said.” Christina was losing confidence. “They should’ve been here already. I can’t tell you exactly what’s going on, but there’s no way of knowing exactly how long it’ll be. Look around. Do you see any cold mountain streams? You better go slow on that water just in case.”
Heather frowned and walked down the beach to be alone.
* * *
The sun started to settle, and there were no signs of rescue. Billy got the feeling something was terribly wrong. He wasn’t a pilot, but he knew that anyone on an IFR flight plan was tracked for collision avoidance, even if communications were lost. The controllers should’ve been able to pinpoint their location. He also knew it would soon be dark.
“I don’t want to sound too negative, Christina, but it looks like we’re going to be here for the night,” Billy said. “No way they’ll be able to spot us after dark. Why don’t I get some stuff out of the plane and try to arrange something to sleep on?”
“Great idea, Billy,” she replied.
Billy was still mourning for Pop, but the sight of three college girls in their brightly colored bikinis didn’t go unnoticed. The concept of camping out for a few days with beautiful girls was inspiring. He figured his Boy Scout training might make him a valuable commodity.
“I don’t need a bed,” Billy offered. “I’ll stay awake and guard the camp while you girls sleep,” he lowered his voice and tried to sound manly. “Got to keep an eye out for drug runners and pirates. You know there are some bad people around these islands.”
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“That’s a good idea,” snickered Jessica. “We’ll sleep and you watch out for pirates. By the way,” she said sarcastically, “what would you do if you saw one?”
Billy was embarrassed. “Well, I’m not sure. Do we have any weapons? Guess I could hit them with my granddad’s fishing pole.”
They laughed out loud as Heather returned from a long walk. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” said Jessica, “we just elected Billy as our bodyguard.”