by Ward, Steve
“You’ve got three important jobs. As soon as I turn out over the water, I want you to pull up the landing gear lever and get the wheels up. I don’t want to catch the gear in the waves.”
“Got it. No problem.”
“After we start climbing, I want you to reach down and drop the flaps. That way I can keep both hands on the yoke.”
“Okay.”
“The third one is most important. Make damn sure I switch that fuel tank selector every fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll use my watch.”
“What do you want me to do?” Heather asked eagerly.
“I want you to strap yourself down nice and tight and pray. Pray to God the wind comes around from the north. If that doesn’t happen, you can start singing Amazing Grace, only this time it’ll be for us.”
They got organized inside the plane and sat back to watch the weather. Christina’s emotions boiled with excitement, anticipation and terror. She had set up a windsock at the top of the beach by tying one of her blouses to a long piece of driftwood and driving it deep in the sand. It was still indicating a westerly wind right across the beach. As black clouds rolled in, the sky darkened and day turned into night. The wind was fierce, and the Saratoga hopped around like a carnival ride. It rained so hard she couldn’t see the beach. Bolts of lightning flashed on both sides, illuminating horrified faces. She began to doubt her well thought out plan. Eyes shifting left and right looking for a break in the weather, she thought, No way to take off in this shit.
As the squall passed, the lights came back on, the wind shifted and visibility improved. Gradually, over a period of about twenty minutes, a more constant wind started to gather steam. She looked at the windsock with a sudden surge of excitement. It’s out of the north!
“This might be it,” she said. “I’m gonna crank ‘er up and test the wind.”
Once again she went through the “cold start” procedure making sure to do everything exactly right. A flooded engine at this point would be the end. She primed the fuel flow and held her breath as she turned the key. There was a clicking sound, but the propeller didn’t move. Suddenly, a pang of fear seized her gut.
“Come on you son-of-a-bitch, don’t crap out on me now.” She turned the key off and back on again with another click. The propeller tried to move, but the battery was too low. There was nothing but the ghostly sound of the howling wind.
She couldn’t help but think it, We’re dead meat! She hung her head and wanted to cry. With visions of hurricane Amy swamping the island, she felt a total failure. How could they name such a monster a sweet name like Amy? she wondered. The Captain had failed her troops, and she knew exactly what Heather was thinking, That boat was our only ticket home.
“So what do we do now, Captain?” Heather asked from the back seat.
“Don’t know,” Christina confessed. “For once, I’m clueless.” Struggling to be brave, she made a bad joke, “I’m afraid it’s time for the fat lady. Do you know that song, Turn Out the Lights, the Party’s Over? Time for the fat lady to sing.”
No one laughed. They just sat there in a maudlin silence as the wind pounded the front of the cockpit. After a few minutes she could hear Heather crying. Billy bowed his head; it looked like he was praying. Without a word he started unbuckling his seatbelt.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Christina queried.
“I’m going to try to turn that prop by hand,” Billy said.
“That could be quite dangerous, William. Have you ever tried to hand-prop a plane before?”
“No, but I’ve seen it done in old movies. I’d rather give it a try than sit here and wait for the hurricane.”
“Yeah, but those were pretty small motors on those old planes. I don’t think you can hand prop a 300 horsepower aircraft engine, too much compression.”
Heather began crying louder.
With a staunch face painted in anger, Billy turned to Christina and barked, “Do you have any better ideas? What do you say we give it a try?” It was more a directive than a question.
Christina hesitated, consumed by a horrid vision of Billy being ground up in the spinner. “But. . .”
“But nothin’. We gotta try.”
“Okay, William, but promise me you’ll be careful.”
The wind howled, lifted the plane and banged it back down with a thud.
Billy shoved the door and turned toward the opening when Christina grabbed him by the arm and shouted, “Wait ‘til I give you this hand signal, then pull down hard on your left side of the prop. . .and get out of the way. If that engine starts, it could suck you in.”
Billy struggled to force the door open against the gale and scrambled outside. Angled into the wind, he trudged like a drunken sailor around to the nose. When he turned to face her, the wind was at his back, trying to blow him off his feet. He leaned into the prop.
Scared shitless, her heart pounded as she looked into the eyes of a teenage boy, eyes set in fierce determination. He grabbed the prop firmly, ready to pull, waiting for her command.
Christina flipped on the Master and yelled, “Contact!” Turning the key to the “Both” position to energize both sets of magnetos, she gave him the signal. Billy yanked down on the prop, and it started to move on its own. The battery took over and turned the prop slowly; then it came to a stop.
Encouraged, she turned off the key and Master switch, opened the little pilot window and screamed over the howling gale, “Let’s try it again.” Billy gave her the thumbs up, and again she flipped on the Master and shouted, “Contact!” She turned on the key and gave him the signal. He pulled down once again, harder this time. The engine fired one time and died. Now she was really encouraged. She talked directly to the power plant, “Come on, Betsy, you can do it.”
The third time she gave him the signal, Billy jumped up to put all his weight into the downward stroke. The motor fired once, then again. Christina frantically pumped the throttle as it was spinning down. Instantly, the engine exploded to life with a deafening roar. Billy threw his arms up in the air and jumped up and down like a football player who had just scored a touchdown. A big gust caught him in the back, and he disappeared below the cowling.
Oh God no! Christina instinctively jerked her head to one side fully expecting to hear the sounds of human flesh crashing into the windshield.
Like some kind of magic, Billy appeared from beneath the wing, crawled back in the door and plopped down in his seat. “Shit, that was close,” he said, chest heaving and sucking for air.
“God almighty, William,” Heather cried, grabbing him from behind. “You are my hero. That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. Now that’s the third time you’ve saved our asses.” She turned his head around and gave him a big wet kiss.
Christina wanted to kiss him, too, but she was too busy trying to remember all she had to do. Now that she was breathing again, she was anxious to get on with it. She pulled the throttle back to idle and turned on the electrical systems. First the instruments had to be reset. She adjusted the gyro-compass to North and set the altimeter on zero. Entering Direct To KMIA on the GPS, it quickly started providing a navigational track to Miami. This done, her eyes went to the airspeed indicator. The needle waved around twenty-five knots. The pointer shot up to forty-five with a big gust and back down to thirty. She stood on the brakes and ran the engine up to 2,000 rpm to check the gauges. Another big gust hit the plane, and it bobbed up and down, shaking violently. She began to worry they might get blown off the beach.
“We’re gonna have to do it now, before something breaks,” she screamed. “It’ll be a rough ride, so tighten your seatbelts. As soon as the wind holds over forty, I’m going for it.”
Answering a message on the GPS, she set her Directional Gyro heading bug and VOR to 310 degrees. Another gust hit the plane and bounced it up and down as the airspeed shot over fifty knots. The makeshift windsock blew down on the beach with a crash. Christina checked the flap setting and rol
led back the trim.
“I’m ready with the gear and the flaps,” Billy howled.
“Wait for my commands!”
Standing down hard on the brakes and pushing the throttle all the way to the firewall, the three-hundred horsepower engine surged to full thrust straining the entire airframe. Hesitating for a moment to make sure absolute maximum power had been achieved, she came off the brakes as the Saratoga lurched forward on hard, wet sand.
“Banzaiii!”
“Banzaiii!” Billy yelled back.
Christina made a quick turn to the backseat and shouted, “Hang on to your ass!”
Rolling down the beach, the erratic airspeed waved by fifty, then fifty-five and back to thirty. Accelerating, she hauled the yoke back enough to get the nose wheel off the sand. Struggling with the rudder, the gale tried to blow her off line. Time seemed to shift into low gear, and she felt they were moving forward in slow motion. Halfway down the beach they lifted off the sand and slammed back down with a jolt. She resisted the temptation to force the nose up too early. As the jagged rocks approached, the airspeed hit 70, and she pulled back hard on the yoke with a little right aileron to slide out over the water. The Saratoga strained a couple of feet into the air with the stall warning ablast. Gaining speed, the left wing barely cleared the rocks as she lowered the nose to silence the alarm.
“Gear up!”
Billy pulled up the control knob, and Christina flew ground effect. “Try to think of those waves as cotton plants,” she spoke to herself. At ninety knots they started to climb.
“Flaps up!”
Billy lowered the lever.
A huge crosswind gust from over the cliffs rolled the plane to the right with a jolt. Losing lift, they dipped toward the sea. Christina lowered the nose and rolled in full left aileron, maneuvering the wings level just a few feet over the waves. At 100 knots she hauled back on the yoke, and they started to climb. Plowing into the teeth of the storm and suddenly climbing at 1,000 feet a minute, she rolled into a left turn for a heading of 310. Just below the clouds she lowered the nose to maintain visual contact below. She wanted to make sure the autopilot could handle the turbulence before abandoning control. The turbulence was bad, and the small plane was all over the sky, but they were flying and heading home.
“Hoorah! Guys, we just did the impossible,” Christina praised her team proudly.
“I’m timing the fuel,” Billy reminded her.
“Thanks William, just let me know.”
She knew they were in for a rough ride but figured nothing could be as bad as the takeoff. She glanced at the GPS and saw they were on track for Miami, so she pushed the buttons to engage the autopilot and released the yoke. They were still bouncing around, but the autopilot held. When she was confident it would fly the plane, she started up into the clouds.
Charging into the blinding mist, it occurred to Christina they would have to fly back through the same violent squall-line that had just passed the island. She nervously scanned the instruments, praying the autopilot would keep them upright. In just a few minutes they broke above the cloud layer into clear air at 6,000 feet and leveled off. The turbulence subsided, and the air was relatively smooth.
Relaxing a few seconds to regain her breath, she looked at an ugly sky. The deadly line of thunderheads was only a few miles ahead. It looked like a fireworks display, brightly illuminated with random bolts of lightning.
“Quite appropriate for the 4th of July, don’t you think?” she said to no one in particular. As had often happened when she was flying, Furgeson’s words came to mind.
Always make sure you know exactly where thunderstorms are and where they’re moving. Never, ever try to fly through one.
It was a new problem she hadn’t considered, and time was short. There wasn’t enough fuel to look for an opening, and she wasn’t about to turn around. They had only one choice, plow right through the explosive air mass and hope for the best. “Hang on!” she yelled. “Gonna get rough in those clouds. Pull your seatbelts so tight that it hurts.” She cut back the power and slowed the airspeed to 100 knots to reduce stress on the airframe.
She knew the autopilot wouldn’t work in severe turbulence. All she could do was hold the yoke with both hands and scan the instruments. Coming up fast on the squall line, they penetrated a solid black wall of thunderstorm hell. A bolt of lightning flashed right in front of the cockpit, and they jolted through hostile air. Soon they were plowing through a solid wall of water. She could only pray, God, don’t let there be any hail. She gripped the yoke with determination, but it was no use.
Suddenly the small plane was out of control. Scanning the instruments, she could hardly believe the vertical speed indicator. It pointed straight up, showing a climb rate in excess of 3,000 feet a minute, yanked up on Mother Nature’s most powerful elevator. Flipping the autopilot off, she knew they were caught in the thunderstorm core. There was nothing she could do but pray the wings would hold and hang tough. Her eyes locked on the altimeter, winding up like a top:
8,000
10,000
14,000
The Saratoga began to tumble like a canoe over Niagara Falls. Things were flying around the cockpit with dangerous velocity, passengers jerked in every direction. The shoulder harnesses were the only things keeping the voyagers from being bludgeoned to a bloody pulp. Christina prayed to God the plane would hold together as she stared at blurred instruments.
16,000
18,000
At 19,000 feet, they shot right out the top of a cumulus cloud into clear blue skies. The Saratoga flipped inverted like a toy as Billy and Heather screamed. Christina worked the controls the best she could. Rather than fighting the severe roll, she pulled in full right aileron and rudder to continue over the top until the aircraft arched back to wings level. She turned to her course of 310 degrees and re-engaged the autopilot.
After such horror and violence, suddenly they were sailing toward home in clear, blue sky at 20,000 feet. The air was so smooth it was eerie.
“Holy shit!” squealed Billy. “Nice barrel roll.”
“You guys okay?” Christina turned to look at Heather. She was white as a sheet.
“Yeah, I guess, but you scared the crap out of me,” said Heather. “I could only think of that dream I had, the plane spinning out of control.”
Christina looked out to inspect the wings, and they looked fine. That wonderful airplane had survived the worst possible turbulence, instruments intact. The GPS held a solid track to Miami. She could only laugh out loud and repeat the phrase her dad had said so many times, “This air is as smooth as a baby’s butt.” She wasn’t just pleased they had survived, she was euphoric and a little light-headed. After major trauma she was coming down fast. Both eyes blinked shut, and she suddenly had a sinking feeling. Gasping in fear, she quickly slapped herself in the face as hard as she could.
“Hypoxia!” she said. “Gotta get down quick.”
“What’s that?” Heather yelled in a panic.
“Too high,” Billy answered. “Not enough oxygen.”
Christina knew they were already suffering at this altitude. She shoved the yoke forward and followed the descending slope of the cloud layer to 12,000 feet. She leveled the flight path back on course to Miami and re-engaged the autopilot. Taking several deep breaths, she shuddered to think what would happen if she passed out.
“Don’t forget the fuel tanks. Time to switch now,” Billy reported.
It had been a frightful fifteen minutes, and fuel management was the last thing on her mind. “Thanks, William.”
The tailwind she had hoped for wasn’t there. The GPS showed one hour and fifty minutes to Miami, and she knew they had less than two hours of fuel. To minimize fuel consumption, she pulled the mixture back until the engine ran rough, then eased it forward. It’s gonna be close, she thought. She could only hope the weather in Miami would be good enough for a visual landing.
Chapter Nineteen
On the 4th of Jul
y, hurricane Amy tore through the Bahamas, stirring up weather on its leading edge. A bright yellow cigarette-boat raced across the ocean, parting the blue-green waters between Andros Island and the Exuma Cays. The super V-hull speed demon was capable of one hundred knots, but the gusty winds were creating choppy waters. A squall line had just passed the area, and the wind was whipping up a light gale from the north. Cruising at seventy knots the boat left a long trail of white foam in its wake.
Aboard were Carl Watkins, owner and pilot of the racer, Jamal Jones, a local native, Bill Wells and Ray Benson, private investigators. Benson had been on many strange assignments in his career, but this was his first experience with a psychic detective. He was more than skeptical. He and Wells had flown from Atlanta to Congo Town Airport on Andros Island to do a quick search before the hurricane hit. Over seventy miles from the crash point indicated by FAA radar, Congo Town was the closest commercial airstrip. Benson hired the boat for two days to take them past every island in the area big enough to sustain life.