Flying Too Close to the Sun

by George Jehn

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “So do I.”

  The combination of dusk and fog had smothered the daylight when they arrived in the Boston area, with the visibility still hovering right around half a mile. Other than having to execute an instrument approach almost to touchdown, the landing on runway 15 Right was routine. While taxiing, the tower reported the visibility had dropped even lower to one-half, variable one-quarter of a mile in fog, still adequate for takeoff.

  . . .

  Bill Francis, the diminutive and balding Boston tower operator checked with his supervisor, Tony Heinz a career Air Traffic controller with over thirty years on the job under his sizeable belt, and then turned off the motion sensors surrounding the airport perimeter, as called for in the Mass Port Authority and TSA security procedures. This system had been installed for some time, but thus far there had been nothing but false alarms and plenty of those, usually caused by seagulls. It was not a well-kept secret some tower personnel furtively turned them off as one of their first orders of business so as not to be disturbed by bogus warnings, but the timid Francis was different. He didn’t want to risk his job over this or any other item as he had been in serious trouble a short time ago while routing planes on ground control. He had granted a clearance for one jet to cross runway 4 Left while another was landing on the same runway. It was only the pilot’s last minute evasive action by aborting the landing that averted a potential catastrophe. Francis said coordination between two controllers was the problem, but he was the only one placed on probation for a year. This meant if he screwed up, made even a minor error during that time, he’d be fired. So, he did everything exactly by the book because he had a wife and two children to support. The regulations stated if the visibility increased beyond a half-mile he had to again check with Heinz and turn the sensors back on if ordered to do so.

  . . .

  Once at the gate Woody quickly deplaned to check his father’s condition. Christina immediately went to a deserted section of the terminal and called Juni. “The conditions are right, but because of the weather we may be off the gate late and there might also be departure delays.”

  “I’ll be there,” Juni said and hung up, hoping he would indeed make it. His watch showed 8:15. There wasn’t much time. Never enough fucking time! His Buick accelerated with a cloud of blue smoke as it exited the hotel lot and cut a swath through the swirling fog. Closer to the water the headlights had difficulty penetrating the billowing veils of mist obscuring everything and painted horizontal ribbons of rainbow-like shades tinted in every color of the spectrum across the windshield. In the yacht club’s parking lot his tires kicked up pieces of gravel and came to an abrupt halt. The conditions were so bad the only thing barely visible was another car, a dark brown SUV. The top of the marina’s gangway lights were bare smudges, with their dull yellowish glow attempting to cut through the fog. They resembled angelic halos no brighter than gaslights peering down from atop the poles. The syrupy air was turning into more of a soupy blackness. Looking toward town, Juni saw the jellylike fog rolling down the street like a silent serpent, slithering through and filling the empty spaces between the square wooden frame houses, creating what appeared to be rows of mausoleums. The vapor wrapped around everything and was so dense Juni felt as though he could cut it with his knife. A very light rain began falling and as the water-mirrored depressions in the parking lot gravel filled, his excitement built. With senses wide open, his anxiety level was rising as quickly as the incoming tide. He exhaled in short bursts like a machine gun with several misfires, the moisture from his breath clinging to his body. With footsteps falling as silently as in snow he opened the trunk and donned the tight-fitting diving gloves. After grabbing some gear and two duffel bags, he prayed the entrance lock was still jammed. Gently pushing on the gate, his damp fingers almost slipped off, but it swung open ever so slowly, inviting him to enter. As he passed by the wooden clubhouse, a bag in each hand, he squinted. There was a broad-shouldered, bearded fellow with kinky hair the color of a rusty pipe, dressed in a stark white baseball jersey with EAST BOSTON MARAUDERS inscribed in black, sitting there. The man was on a porch rocker nursing a beer. His face looked like it was cast from cement, with haunting gray eyes on the top. Did the fog distort his appearance? Pleased this wasn’t a social type fishing club, when on nights members couldn’t sail they sat around drinking beers and telling bullshit fishing stories until the wee hours, Juni simply nodded as he passed the stranger. The fellow responded with a barely detectable wave, beer in hand. Juni turned his attention to the task at hand.

  At the boat, he placed everything on the deck and returned to the car to get the remaining items, again waving to the man as he passed by and made his way back down the slippery walkway. He gingerly stepped aboard the uncovered Pride of the Navy. It again listed to starboard and quickly righted itself. All was quiet except for the hardware clinking against the aluminum masts of sailboats berthed nearby. After stowing everything, he raised the lid of the sixty-horsepower Evinrude outboard, grateful for witnessing friends hot wiring cars on the Brooklyn streets. Holding the small penlight between his teeth, its beam cut through the darkness smoother than a hot knife through butter. After fumbling with the pliers, he snipped one end off the starter ignition wires and stripped away the damp plastic coating. He then connected the ignition to the battery lead wires and touched them to the starter line. The outboard coughed and came to life, ready to do its work. The motor would run so long as the ignition remained attached to the battery lead.

  Due to the gloves, with difficulty he changed into the constricted wet suit and diving boots and compared the reading on his hand-held compass to the boat’s Airglide marine compass, noting they differed by only a couple of degrees. He turned on the portable Very High Omni Range navigation unit, the VOR radio, which would be his means of accurately navigating to the airport in the near-zero visibility conditions. After tuning the digital dial to frequency 112.7, the Boston VOR, as instructed by Christina he selected the 168-degree radial. While doing this he recalled their meeting at Pepi’s when he had pointed out the most important ingredient, piss poor visibility—could also hinder success. “Picture this,” he told her and Erik. “The visibility is so shitty I can’t be seen navigating to your plane, meaning I also won’t be able to see anything. There’s a powerful current running in the three-quarter mile wide channel between the marina and airport, ruling out using only a compass. This means I gotta have a way to navigate with pinpoint precision.” He went on to explain the tide also had to be at least halfway in during the flood stage, because this way he would come ashore within easy walking distance of the taxiway where they would be waiting. The incoming tide also meant Mother Nature would reclaim its rightful territory and quickly erase all signs that anyone had set foot there. Neither Christina nor Erik had considered the navigation element. “Presuming I make it to the airport, my position could be anywhere, and the wrong location would cost the most crucial element we don’t have; time. I’ll have only two to three minutes and each trip to the boat and back means two duffel bags, but four is the number I’ll be shooting for. Plus, I’ll not only be removing the money bags but replacing them with dummies. I can’t be running all over the airport ‘cause with this terrorist stuff, someone might spot me and report it. If that happens, the cops will put two and two together and implicate you. Bottom line is I gotta have a way to get to your exact location.”

  Erik floated the idea of using one of those new personal GPS units that’s supposedly accurate to within feet. But Christina quashed that. “Those satellites are sent up by a government agency, I believe it’s the Department of Defense, meaning there’s probably a record of the coordinates that are selected. So, it would undoubtedly be easy to download that information, allowing the cops to trace it and quickly crack exactly what happened.” They fell into silence, but a moment later Christina’s face lit u
p. “I’ve got it,” she exclaimed and told Juni about the hand-held portable VOR radio. “It might seem a bit difficult for a non-pilot to understand, but we navigate our planes on avenues in the sky formed by flying from one VOR to another. A VOR is a line-of-sight homing device that sends out signals shaped like a wagon wheel with the VOR located at the center. Each spoke or radial, as they’re called, represents one compass degree. All you do to navigate precisely is select a particular radial and keep the needle on your radio centered. Your only other requirement is to be tuned to the Boston VOR frequency of 112.7. You’ll be steering to the VOR facility located on the airport and you can reach the exact spot where we’ll be waiting. And, there’s no way anyone can track you down. In order to return to the dock you use the same procedure but with the reciprocal radial, a hundred and eighty degrees different.” She had later provided the specific radial to pinpoint their location.

  Juni was ready and with gurgling stomach stood motionless, staring out at the pitch black expanse, straining to see beyond the murkiness engulfing everything. He inhaled deeply and untied the boat, leaving the ropes so they could be reached effortlessly upon return. He motored ever so slowly away from the dock, staying close enough to maintain visual contact until he reached the end. At that point he slipped into what felt like another dimension, a sinister world of eerie blackness, with the surface of the water resembling a slab of gray slate occasionally moved up and down by some unseen force beneath. He feared the darkness, but would never confess that to anyone. Besides the chugging of the engine, the only other sound was his own nervous gasps coming in short staccato bursts, causing his heart to beat so hard he felt as though it was bouncing off his ribcage. But the die was cast and there was no turning back.

  As instructed, he took up a heading of 150 degrees and held this course until intercepting the 168-degree radial. The only other noise was the gentle slapping of waves against the wooden hull, the material purposely chosen to avoid possible radar detection. The boat amounted to an acoustic sponge smelling of salt and oil. Suddenly, the din of an idling jet engine was followed by a deafening roar, a spine-chilling sound that interrupted the tranquility with throbbing felt to the bone. As a feeling of dread came over him, Juni shook so hard it was as though his sweat had frozen and turned to ice. But the noise did provide some solace, proving he wasn’t on an uninhabited, lifeless planet. But the sounds were only out there somewhere, an oppressive force with the power to disorient. Once the jet departed the silence was once again so overpowering it seemed to have substance. The can of Coke he drank earlier worked its way through his system and he fought off the urge to vomit, instead whispering aloud, trying to convince himself there was a splendid canvas of moon and stars somewhere above the enveloping gloom. But the blackness seemed solid and eternal. Christina had hammered home the point that just like a pilot he must place complete faith in his instruments. Indeed, the success of the job and perhaps his life hinged on his compass and radio.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the VOR needle finally centered on the 168-degree radial, meaning he was on course. But this was a short-lived respite. He and Christina had previously practiced near a VOR facility located at Riverhead, Long Island, but that was done from a stationary car. Now, whenever he glanced at the radio, the boat’s heading would shift by thirty or forty degrees, but if he paid attention to the compass, the VOR indicator would deflect full scale showing off-course. He felt like the Lone Ranger, but without Tonto. He occasionally looked toward the sky searching for the lunar face that had to be there, somewhere. A quick glance at his timepiece showed it was 8:55. Juni assumed the navigation would be a piece of cake, but he should have known better because nothing in his life came easy. In spite of sweating, his teeth were chattering, slamming together like torrents from a rifle firing round after round inside his brain. “I’d like to get my hands on that broad and kid right now,” he mumbled. “Those fucking Germans always got some tricky shit up their conniving sauerkraut sleeves. If I overshoot the goddamn airport..?” He even contemplated turning back since Christina said all he needed to do was reverse the procedure one hundred and eighty degrees. At least the marina was still behind him. Or was it? One real fear remained. He didn’t want to die. Please God, not now.

  . . .

  Christina and Erik were in the cockpit, when at approximately 8:40 a ground supervisor asked, “Any weather-related departure delays?”

  Woody hadn’t returned, so Christina radioed Boston’s clearance delivery. “Any delays getting into LaGuardia?”

  “They’re minimal, running ten to fifteen minutes at most.”

  She passed on this information to the guy, who replied, “That’ll work out fine. We have a short wait for a connecting passenger and now I can pin the delay on air traffic control.”

  After hearing the magic words connecting passenger, Christina glanced at Erik, but neither uttered a word. Just then, Woody returned, looking alarmed. “My old man’s taken a turn for the worse. Are there any delays getting out? This is probably his last night.”

  “I just checked,” Christina said softly, welcoming the momentary respite. “Boston’s right at landing minimums, but there should be no difficulty departing. There are only minimal delays outbound, ten to fifteen minutes, which we would have had anyway because we’re waiting for a passenger. The LaGuardia weather’s above landing minimums, so we should arrive close to schedule.”

  “Thanks. I’ll let the doctor know I’ll be there later tonight.” Woody left the cockpit.

  . . .

  At exactly 8:50 the heavy metal doors of the armored truck were slammed shut and padlocked for the approximate ten-minute ride to Logan airport’s cargo section via the Fitzgerald Expressway and Callahan Tunnel. Although a GPS device monitored their every move, Norton disliked the tunnel portion because he felt if anyone were going to attack them it would be the perfect location, as all it would take were two cars to block any escape route. His senses were always on full alert and sidearm at the ready during this portion of the journey but there was nothing out of the ordinary other than the trip taking a few minutes longer due to the drizzle and fog. As they approached the airport, Norton hoped their flight wouldn’t be delayed long because he had a date later that evening. A few moments later, after meticulously checking Norton’s ID on a scanner, the airport guards raised the steel reinforced barrier gate allowing the armored car onto the airport perimeter road. Planeside, in dampness so penetrating he shivered regardless of wearing a raincoat, Norton oversaw the loading of eight bags containing a little over four million dollars. When finished, he peered inside the forward cargo hold to make certain nothing other than the money was there. Once the cargo door was slammed shut he signed a document attesting to the number of bags and their proper loading, sprinted up the Jetway and took his reserved seat directly above the cargo compartment. The armored vehicle would wait next to the jet with its occupants observing it until it began taxiing.

  While Woody was busy reciting the Before Starting checklist, Erik silently removed the two tiny light bulbs from behind the forward cargo door open indicator light and placed them in his shirt pocket. His metabolism was in such high gear with a heartbeat so deafening, he feared he wouldn’t hear anything spoken. He next tripped the circuit breaker for the cargo compartment’s interior lights. To buy the needed time, he then pulled the large, number two engine generator control circuit breaker. All cockpit indicators would now show that generator as inoperative.

  . . .

  Juni cursed everything and everyone, including the wooden boat that wouldn’t steer straight. He was still shivering inside the wetsuit, his chilly sweat akin to cold rainwater dripping down a windowpane, but in this case it was his back. How could you be sweating, freezing and frightened to death simultaneously? Even worse, the fog and sweat combination began to sting his eyes, causing more misery. He’d be
en in the tiny boat for what seemed like an eternity and had to be getting close to something, although he had no way of knowing what. As he held the VOR radio on top of the compass so he could observe both at once, the needle remained centered, indicating he was on course. Then suddenly and without warning there was a loud crunching sound and the boat lurched, coming to such an abrupt halt Juni was knocked from his seat and onto the deck. Back on his feet, he shifted into neutral, went to the engine and quickly detached the ignition wire, shutting down the engine. Squinting, he was barely able to make out the fog-shrouded outline of a shoreline. All was quiet except for the lapping of the waves. Was this the airport? From the charts he knew the runway jutted out into the bay, forming a U-shaped peninsula. But it seemed way too quiet. Maybe he’d landed someplace else? He stepped gingerly off the bow onto a blob of soft green marsh grass, his boots making a squishing sound from the suction. The sodden earth shuddered and gave way slightly under his weight, like Jell-O in a bowl when a spoon is placed on it. Constantly glancing at his handheld compass, he cautiously walked on the required heading for approximately seventy-five feet. As he peered through the thick air he spotted a large yellow sign with bold, black letters stating, AIRPORT – NO TRESPASSING. A chill of wonder still coupled with a goodly amount of fright ran down his spine as he murmured, “Goddamn, I made it!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Although in awe, Juni still didn’t know his exact airport location. He continued walking in the direction of 168 degrees and a few moments later came upon a paved area bordered by blue lights with a row of green, recessed lighting running down the center. Christina had described these as taxiway lights. Once on the taxiway he moved in a northeasterly direction, which brought him to another bright yellow reflective sign with black letters reading N-2, the agreed-upon intersection. To validate this, he turned right and walked another hundred feet or so on southeasterly track until the white edge lights of runway 22 Right appeared. He hurried back to the boat, passing one of the small poles on the way. Was it a motion sensor? Were the cops on the way now? His wristwatch showed 9:05, meaning there were probably ten to fifteen minutes until rendezvous time. Back at the boat he lifted two of the duffels with the intention of placing them in the grass alongside the taxiway, but stopped. In case the cops were dispatched, he’d remain with the boat to make a quick getaway. Plus, forensic tests would no doubt link the bags to the mud. So, he left them on the boat and sat on the bow waiting for the now familiar high-pitched jet engine whine and hopefully not a police siren.