“Dios mio. Okay, like this?”
“That’s perfect. Whatever you do, don’t go down.”
“I’m not an idiot.”
I released my seat belt and retrieved Maria’s suitcase. “Hey, what are you doing with my things?” She let go of the yoke. We started to dive.
“Pay attention!” I grabbed the yoke, pulled up, and brought the plane back to level. “Take over! Keep us at 100 feet.”
“Sí, mi Comandante!”
“What did you say?”
“Never mind. When we get to New York, you’ll need to learn Spanish.”
I gathered a bundle of her clothing into my lap. The next part was tricky. It’s not easy to open an airplane door in flight.
“Maria, turn the plane slightly to the left,” I added power. We tracked a tight circle over some desolate spot in the Atlantic. The left turn reduced the air pressure against my door.
I leaned against the door and released the lock. Chaos erupted. The swirling wind grabbed everything not tied down and blew it in our faces. The plane tipped further to the left, and I started slipping off my seat. I had forgotten to re-attach my seat belt.
“Help! I’m falling!” I screamed.
“Dan, hold on.” Maria let go of the yoke and grabbed my jacket. That just made it worse. The plane tipped at a forty-five-degree angle.
Maria pulled with both hands. The airplane continued its dive. The wind wound a white bra around my head. I couldn’t see anything.
“Grab the bra!” I yelled.
Maria pulled. The undergarment held and provided the needed leverage for me to regain my seat. We finally leveled off just feet above the waves.
“Are you okay?” Maria asked.
“I guess so.”
“Now what?”
“We’ll try again.”
The plane was a mess. The wind blew all my paper and much of Maria’s laundry around the cabin.
“Did anything blow out while the door was open?” I asked.
“Just some papers. I wasn’t paying attention.”
I recovered my breath and said, “Thanks for saving my life.”
“I owed you that. Besides, I’m getting to like you.” She smiled and kissed me on the cheek.
We tried again. This time I used my seatbelt. Bit by bit Maria handed me the contents of our two suitcases followed by the suitcases themselves. Finally, she gave me a plastic bag, one that I assumed was full of trash. Only the bag of cocaine and my laptop retained their privileged positions on the back seat.
I locked the door and did one more circle so we could admire our handiwork. Maria’s empty suitcase bobbed in the waves next to my khaki slacks. Nearby, a multicolored panty selection floated a few feet away from white jockey shorts. Maybe they’ll intertwine somewhere in the depths.
“That’s good enough to convince anyone,” I said.
“I hope you’re right. I have nothing to wear.”
“I’ll buy you new underwear in New York.”
“What a gentleman!”
I turned off the transponder to complete our deception. Somewhere in a windowless ATC building, a controller noted the time the signal went out.
I brought the plane back to five hundred feet and turned west.
Chapter 19
Dan and Maria Make Plans
“The only time you have too much fuel,” my flight instructor once told me, “is when your plane’s on fire.” I didn’t have too much fuel. We could stay in the air only two more hours. Since we were heading into the wind, our flight back to land would take longer and use more fuel than our trip out to sea.
I visualized an ever-shrinking circle symbolizing the limit of our flight superimposed on a map of the Eastern United States. We had to find a place to land somewhere within that circle.
“Hungry?” Maria asked, interrupting my calculations.
“Yeah, what’s on the menu?”
“We have a delightful assortment of protein bars, bologna sandwiches, and water.”
“Stewardess, I could have sworn I reserved a first class seat.”
“I’m sorry sir; this is definitely an economy flight. What do you want? I haven’t got all day.”
“I’ll take a water and a protein bar.” Maria opted for a sandwich.
The miles clicked slowly by. The fuel gauges moved unperceptively, from right to left. The watery landscape didn’t change. “When do we get to LaGuardia?” Maria asked as she ate.
I laughed. “We can’t land at LaGuardia.”
“Don’t laugh at me, big shot. Why can’t we?”
“First off, small planes can’t land there. More importantly, we’re dead now, remember? We can’t land at any public airport. Someone will see my tail number and report us.”
“So what are we going to do, Mr. Genius? We can’t stay up here forever. Besides, I have to pee.”
“My friend, Pete Swanson, owns a small farm with a private landing strip. There’s a barn where we can hide the plane.”
“Can we stay there?”
“Yeah, he’s not there. He had a stroke last year and moved to Florida. I visited right before he moved and he showed me where he keeps a spare key. The farm is between Gettysburg and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.”
“You sure you can land there?”
“Landing on grass strips is my specialty.”
“Okay, we land there, then what?”
“We’ll stay the night. Tomorrow we’ll borrow Pete’s pickup truck and drive to New York.”
“Sounds good, Dan. You’re finally putting that brain to good use.”
“Thanks, I guess. We have just enough fuel to get there as long as we don’t do anything crazy along the way.”
“Gotcha. No aerobatics.”
We were halfway to land and about two hours away from Pete’s farm. Once we got to land, I planned to stay away from radar-equipped airports. Our biggest danger was cell phone towers and other aircraft. As long as we stayed under the clouds, we would be okay.
The last time Pete and I were together, he wrote his farm’s latitude and longitude on one of my sectional charts. “Just look for a long, narrow lake,” he said. “My farm’s at the north end of the lake. Call ahead, and I’ll put on the coffee.” I never had the chance to take him up on his offer.
“Maria, there’s a plastic bag in the back with all my maps. Please look through them, find the one titled New York, and hand it to me.”
I kept my eyes straight ahead while she looked in the back. We were still forty-five minutes from land.
“What does the bag look like?” she asked.
“It’s a white, plastic, grocery-store bag. You’ll see a bunch of paper maps in it. It might have slipped under my seat.”
She unfastened her seatbelt and got on her knees to search the back seat. “It’s not here. I don’t see it.”
My heartbeat quickened. Sweat started to drip from my baseball cap. Without those numbers, we were lost.
“It has to be! Look again.”
She leaned further into the back. I adjusted the trim to compensate for the weight change.
“Dan, I don’t see a white, plastic bag. I don’t see any plastic bags. Are you sure you had it?”
“Maria, Maria … ”
“Stop saying my name.” She returned to her seat. “Your God damn maps aren’t in the back seat.”
“They have to be. We can’t find Pete’s farm without the chart.”
“You look. I think you threw them out … ”
“If I threw them out, it was only because you handed them to me.”
“I thought it was trash.”
“God damn it, woman! Where’s your head!”
“Fuck you!”
“Fuck you!”
“I’ll look. Hold the plane.”
I adjusted the trim while Maria put her hands on the yoke. I took off my headset so I could more easily maneuver. I looked under the passenger seat. No maps. I looked under my seat. No maps. The trickle of sweat tur
ned into a stream. The maps were gone. I would have to fly the way it was done before electronics using dead reckoning and landmarks.
I regained my seat, put on my headset and took over the controls. A deep scowl covered my face. The smell of my worry overcame the stink from Maria’s cigarettes.
“What are we gonna do?”
“I’ll use my GPS as long as I can. Pete’s farm is at the north end of a long, narrow lake. Once we find the lake, we’ll find the landing strip.”
“You’re telling me we have to find a lake in Pennsylvania? Have you ever been there?”
“Yes, once, but I came by car.”
“What if we can’t find the lake in time?”
“We’ll find the lake. How hard can it be?”
“We’re fucked.”
“Thanks for the moral support!”
I entered the code for the Gettysburg Airport into the GPS and adjusted our heading accordingly. I had to turn further into the wind to track our heading — more fuel to cover the same distance.
Maria finished a bottle of water and threw it in the back. She had a pensive look on her face. “Dan, I don’t mean to bother you while you’re doing such a good job with this flying jalopy, but darling, querido, where did you put your money?”
“What money?”
“The money we split last night. I gave you five thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills. I have mine in my purse.” She held up her purse for me to see. “Where in this flying shithouse did you put yours?”
My heart sank. I knew what was coming next. “I put it in the zippered compartment of my suitcase. You have it don’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you take the money from the suitcase before you handed it to me?” My heart raced. It wasn’t hard to anticipate her reaction.
“No, asshole, I didn’t. Don’t try to put this on me. It was your suitcase. You didn’t tell me anything. You threw it out, and now it’s a home for some fish.”
I held my breath.
“You fucking idiot! We didn’t get rid of the suitcase, you did! You told me to hand it to you. You threw five-thousand dollars into the waves!” She hit me in the back of the head three times.
“How the hell did I end up with you?” she shouted.
I wanted to say, you came running to me. I wanted to remind her that I kept her from becoming a bloodstain on the asphalt. Those words passed through my mind. A decade of marriage taught me to keep my mouth shut.
“Do you have any money left?” she asked in a calmer voice.
“About a thousand.”
“Give it to me! If you hold onto it, it’ll get swallowed by a whale.” I handed her my wallet. She stuffed all but a few small bills into her bra. She saw me looking and said, “Keep your eyes on the road, pervert.”
The flying pervert kept his eyes on the horizon. He concentrated on staying in the air between two bodies of water — liquid below, clouds above. If they hit an air pocket, the pervert and his companion would be in the wet before they knew it.
“I can’t talk to you anymore,” Maria sneered. She took off her headset and threw it on the floor, cutting off all communication. She stared out the right side window, her arms firmly locked across her chest. I stared straight ahead.
Fine, let her stew in her own juice. I’m tired of being bossed around.
Without my girlfriend’s distractions, my heartbeat found the engine’s rhythms, and I entered that special, mental space where I became one with my airplane — yoke and rudder, no radio, no map — just me, the engine, the airplane and the endless sky. I had no past, no future, just a continuous present. Check heading. Check altitude. Check engine temperature. Repeat, repeat, again and again.
***
She hit me.
“Maria,” I said without looking, “Please stop hitting me.” She hit me again.
Her mouth moved, but without her headset, I had no idea what she was saying. She pointed. I realized words weren’t necessary.
A great steel wall came towards us at incredible speed. It blocked out the sunlight. An apocalyptic destroyer, it obliterated everything in its path.
More than twenty stories high, the massive container ship sailed directly in our path.
Flying over wasn’t an option — I could never gain altitude fast enough. I had to beat it by passing in front.
I added power and turned sharply to the left. I reduced altitude to gain speed, bringing my left wing dangerously close to the waves. I expected to hear the ship’s horn blast a warning.
“Faster, Chico! You need to go faster!” She had her headset on again.
Maximum engine RPMs. Tipped at a forty-five-degree angle, pressed against our seatbelts, we waited for disaster. Maria grabbed my hand. She watched the ship. I watched the waves. We held our breaths. We screamed.
The enormous ship not only parted the waves, but it also pushed the air ahead of it. A great gust of air grabbed my light plane pushed it away from the bow. The great ship passed behind us. No horn blast. No contact.
“Dios mio, does that always happen when you fly, or only when I’m with you?”
I couldn’t answer immediately. My hands were shaking. I brought the plane back to 500 feet, and reduced RPMs to save fuel.
“It doesn’t always happen. We were flying too low. Can you hold the plane? I need some water.” I looked at the fuel gauges. The high-RPM maneuver cost us. It was going to be tight.
I drank. She held the controls. The GPS informed me we were close to land.
“Maria, we would’ve died if you hadn’t spotted the ship.”
“I guess I saved your life. Now we’re even.”
***
Near Gettysburg, the solid clouds dissolved. We flew in partial sunlight. We’d been flying for more than four hours. Both fuel gauges registered less than an eighth of a tank. The GPS was useless. We needed to find Pete’s landing strip as soon as possible.
“Maria, start looking for Pete’s lake. It’ll be long and narrow with trees on both sides. There’s a clearing at the north end. You’ll see a house and barn.”
“I see lots of fields but no lakes.”
Below us, Amish children waved as we flew over their neat farms. Would any of them remember my tail number? Did it still matter?
The land rose to meet us as we entered the Allegheny foothills. Rivers and forests replaced the farms. We had to be getting close.
The fuel gauges hovered over “E.” We only had minutes left to fly.
“Maria, what do you see?”
“I see a lake. It’s long and narrow.”
“Where? Where’s the lake.”
“Over there, to my right.”
It wasn’t the right lake. There was no farm, no landing strip at the north end.
The engine coughed. I adjusted the mixture, reducing the fuel, adding more air. Should we go on? Maybe it’s just over the next hill?
The engine hesitated again. Then it hit me — the plane had to die.
The plane had to die so we could live. I lost everything else. Now I’ll lose my airplane, my aluminum mistress. It was the final plan.
The engine sputtered its agreement — it wanted to die. I wobbled the wings to drain the last pints of fuel. It came back to life, willing to give its last energy to support me.
“We’re going to ditch the plane in the lake,” I shouted. “We’ll get to New York somehow. Take off your headset. I’ll land as close to the middle of the lake as possible so when the plane sinks it will go all the way to the bottom. No one will ever find it.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? You’re gonna crash in the lake?”
“I’m not kidding. If I do it right, we’ll land gently and swim to shore.” A horrible thought entered my mind. “You can swim, can’t you?”
“Yes, you fucking gringo, I can swim. I grew up on an island, remember?” After a pause, “You’ve done this before?”
“Hell no!”
“Madre de Dios.”
&nb
sp; The lake was about three miles long and a half-mile wide. I aligned our flight path with the lake’s length, pretending it was a runway. The engine died a final time. No more fuel. The overwhelming engine noise was replaced by the quiet whisper of the wind. I unplugged my headset and threw it in the back. Maria tried to do the same, but her legs were tangled in the wires. I couldn’t help her.
Fighting a cross wind, I gained speed by lowering the nose and turned towards the lake. “We’re going to make it,” I shouted. We crossed the last of the trees and flew over a small house. “Unbuckle your seatbelt!”
We were a few dozen feet above the water. I corrected to the right.
Too much.
All hell broke loose.
The right wing tip dug into the water. The plane cartwheeled. The momentum threw me against the unlocked door. A bolt of pain shot through my left shoulder, and the door flew open.
I got my left foot out, ready to jump. The door slammed shut on my calf. I heard a sharp crack. White hot pain radiated throughout my body.
The plane rotated on its wing, and the centrifugal force threw me out of the plane and into the air. Before I hit the water, I caught sight of my plane standing on its nose, balancing like an Olympic athlete. I never saw the end of its act.
I sank into the cold, dark water. Which way’s up? My shoulder hurt. My leg hurt. My lungs hurt. I stroked with my right arm towards the less dark, the less cold.
Onto the surface. I had enough time to get a lungful of air before my waterlogged clothes dragged me under again.
I once took a course on how to ditch a plane and survive. “Take off your pants. Tie knots at the ends. Trap air inside. Use your pants as a life preserver.” I knew what I had to do, but I couldn’t move my left arm or bend my left leg.
Which way to land? Where’s Maria?
I picked a direction. Tried to swim with one arm. Sank.
Did I remember to kick off my shoes? How will I get to New York without shoes?
One more stroke. One more gasp. One more. Maybe I’m swimming down the spine of the lake, not to the nearest shore? I looked around and just saw trees.
I need to get to shore. “Maria,” I shouted. No reply.
Oh, my God. Did Maria get out of the plane? Is she dead? Did I kill her? “Mari…” I swallowed water and went down.
Flying Blind Page 16