 |
 |
|
| E-mail this page to a friend | Tell me when this page is updated |
| THE HEART HAS WINGS I BY MARY CATHERINE |
CHAPTER 2 |
The runway and tie down area were deserted as he pulled out his key and unlocked the airplane. After removing the ties at the two wings and tail and the chocks on the wheels, he struggled awkwardly as he tried to push the aircraft out without help. The only way he could accomplish it was to push a few feet on one side, then run around the nose to the other and push again. He had to repeat the process many times before 64M was in position in the middle of the airstrip. Now he began the preflight process, quickly checking the outside of the plane. Impatiently, he reached in the open door and unlatched the passenger side. He walked around the front of the plane and rummaged in the pouch behind the right seat of the airplane. Using a small cup with a probe device attached, he drained a small amount of fuel from each tank. This process was especially important in Mexico, because the one-dollar per liter cost of gasoline often caused dealers to add water to the fuel, which could cause engine failure. Todd cursed as he held the fuel sample up to the dim light, realizing there was no way he could make out whether any water bubbles rested on the bottom of the sample cup or not. Impatiently, he tossed the small amount of fuel onto the sand at his feet.
As she opened the door to her motel room, Téa was struck by how cool the early morning air felt against her skin. She went back in for a moment and grabbed a sweater before heading out for an early morning walk along the beach. She was completely alone as she went out the gate and across the runway, the dawn still being a long way off. Everyone at the hotel had partied pretty hard the night before, and she was not surprised to find herself the only early riser in the vicinity. “Riser” was a misnomer, she decided. She hadn’t even been to sleep at all. After her nerve-wracking experience the night before, she hadn’t been able to settle down. Finally, as the early morning cacophony of crowing roosters began, she gave up and got dressed, opting for a stroll along the coast in an attempt to relax. As she crossed the wide, sand runway, she glanced to the south and was surprised to see a plane pushed out into the middle of the runway. It was very early for any of the pilots she had met the night before to be up and about, given the amount of alcohol she had seen them consume.
Suddenly, she stopped in her tracks. There it was again--that feeling. Curiously, she glanced again at the plane, and thought she could detect movement in the vicinity. Taking a deep breath, she decided to take a closer look. She slowed down, coming to an abrupt stop as she stared open-mouthed at the sight before her. The light was still dim, but there was no mistaking that slim, tall body silhouetted against the gray of the dawn. He bustled around the plane as she watched, obviously preparing for a take-off. “It can’t be,” she thought, discounting the evidence of her eyes. “Todd doesn’t know anything about planes, except how to write a check and pay for one.”
Using a small flashlight, Todd studied the aeronautical chart spread in front of him on the right seat. He didn’t have any idea of where he was headed, although the idea of striking a course due west and heading out over the Pacific Ocean directly away from land had a certain appeal. He could keep flying for hours until he ran out of fuel, having topped off the tanks when he had arrived several weeks before. When the plane did eventually exhaust the fuel, he could enjoy his final ride into oblivion, finding his grave on the blue waves, sinking into the darkness where he would never see or hear those he had hurt again. Struggling to control his emotions, he stowed the chart and pulled out a small folding stool and plastic pipette, preparing to check the fuel level. It was a precaution that had been drummed into him during flight training, given how notoriously unreliable aircraft fuel gages were known to be.
A slow shiver slid up his spine, and his head snapped up. He whirled around, coming face to face with Téa, who stood a few feet away, a look of abject misery clear on her beautiful face. They stared at each other silently for a long moment, eyes locked together. Then Todd’s face slowly crumpled.
“No!” he shouted. “Get away from me, Delgado!” Quick as a flash, he raced around the front of the plane and jumped into the left seat. The usual engine start checklist was completely forgotten as shoved in the lean and clawed at the prime knob, violently squeezing fuel for the start-up into the engine cylinders. Grabbing the key from the dash, he jammed it into the ignition. Yelling, “Clear!” out of habit, he turned the key hard, breathing a sigh of relief as the propeller began to rotate and the engine turned over with a roar. Without bothering to fasten his seatbelt or latch the doors, he shoved in the throttle and began to taxi.
The inertia of Téa’s initial shock dissipated rapidly as she watched Todd trying to escape her without even the courtesy of an explanation for his abandonment. Todd floored the left rudder pedal, turning the aircraft sharply so it faced down the runway. His eyes met Téa’s as he taxied past her still form. He couldn’t keep the regret from his features as he turned his attention to the gages inside the cockpit, preparing for take-off. As she watched the passenger door flapping unlatched as the plane picked up speed, Téa felt something give way deep inside of her. Feeling a sudden burst of uncontrollable anger, she whispered, “No way, Manning.” Before she realized what was happening, her feet were carrying her down the runway, parallel to the rapidly accelerating Cessna. With the adrenaline kicking in, a burst of speed soon brought her along side the open door.
Todd glanced nervously at the cylinder head temperature gage. Ordinarily, an aircraft engine had to warm up before take-off. But the expediency of the moment convinced him that one take-off with a cold engine wouldn’t matter all that much. Feeding in the throttle, he pegged his eye on the airspeed indicator, waiting impatiently for the craft to reach the proper speed for rotation, not noticing the sprinting woman just below the right wing.
With the last bit of reserve energy, Téa reached for the flapping door, flinging it aside and launching herself desperately into the cockpit. She made it halfway, grasping at the passenger seat, and lifting her feet off the ground. The plane hurtled down the runway, now rolling too fast for Téa to let go and fall to the earth safely. Preoccupied with trying to do a rolling run-up of the engine, Todd glanced down in shock as a wild woman suddenly materialized next to him, her hands clinging to the seat and her feet flailing out the door, wildly kicking in the prop wash. Distracted, he nearly veered off the airstrip and into the desert, which would have killed them both. Quickly, he used his feet to realign the aircraft with the runway. In the small amount of time left to him, he had to make a decision. He could abort the take-off, pulling out the throttle and slowing the aircraft to a safe enough speed for him to shove Téa out the door. The problem was that with the short, soft field, there wouldn’t be enough runway left for him to take off. He’d have to taxi back toward the hotel a distance, no doubt giving the Federales time to catch up and nab him. There was only one other choice.
Screaming out his frustration, Todd reached out his right arm and grasped Téa by the belt, hauling her roughly on board the plane. She sprawled over the seat clumsily, kicking wildly at the rudder pedals on the right side as she tried to pull herself up. Fighting against the pressure she exerted, Todd shoved in his feet. As the 182 reached an indicated airspeed of 60 knots, he pulled gently back on the yoke. Téa gasped in surprise as she felt the physical release as the plane broke contact with the ground. The engine whined loudly as something about as graceful as a beached bull walrus on the ground pulled free of the gravity holding it down, and smoothly climbed into the medium for which it was designed. Feeling a deep fear in the pit of her stomach, she scrambled into the seat, staring in shock at the quickly receding ground visible through the open door on her right. Gritting her teeth, she clutched the seat tightly, afraid to let go of the only thing between her and a deadly plunge to the earth.
In the back of Todd’s mind was the thought that the airplane was climbing too easily for a craft with fully loaded tanks, but he had other, more urgent distractions to deal with. “Fly the airplane,” he breathed to himself, using the mantra of pilots everywhere when dealing with unforeseen chaos in the cockpit. He shut out the thought of Téa beside him as he smoothly bled off the flaps and adjusted the throttle and propeller to the “top of the green”, referring to the green line on the gages that indicated normal engine function. After one more visual sweep of the instruments, he glanced around outside, checking for other traffic or obstacles. Satisfied that the take-off was progressing normally, he turned his attention to other pressing matters.
Reaching out his left hand, he grabbed the door and pulled it closed, quickly slamming the latch down. Finally, he looked over at Téa, who was still clinging to the seat, a look of total terror on her face. “Shut the door, dammit!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. She looked over at him with wide eyes. Taking a deep breath, she grabbed the door on her side and latched it closed. Following his lead, she fumbled for the seatbelt and cinched it tightly around her waist. The plane hit a little patch of turbulence and dropped a few feet, giving Téa the same sensation in her stomach that the first drop of a roller coaster usually produced. Groaning, she clutched at her stomach. After a few moments, she was reasonably sure they weren’t about to fall out of the sky and she turned to her companion with a scowl on her face.
“You turn this plane around right now, Todd Manning!” she screamed above the roaring engine.
Todd glanced at her, disgust plain on his face. “Oh right. So you can sick your brother and his cop cronies on me! Forget it, Delgado.”
“So that was you out in the darkness last night!” she exclaimed. “I might have known you’d be too cowardly to come forward.” Todd glared at her, then turned the plane to the right, taking up a heading of 270 degrees, due west. Téa panicked, seeing the mountain chain that snaked along the spine of the Baja peninsula looming up in front of them and knowing that they were heading farther away from Mulége with every rotation of the propeller. “I’m not kidding, Todd! Take me back or, so help me God, I’ll see that you spend the rest of your life rotting in a Mexican prison for kidnapping!”
In a mocking tone Todd said, “Oh, that’s so much worse than rotting in the American jail cell you and your brother have waiting for me if I go back. I didn’t kidnap you. You stowed away on my plane.” His eyes suddenly hard he continued, “Or is the plan to just gun me down without a word, no questions asked from the Federales, huh? One more gringo out of the way. Forget it, Delgado. I’m not going back, so just enjoy the ride.” He held the yoke so that the airspeed was 72 knots, best climb rate for the Cessna 182, adjusting the trim wheel so he didn’t have to struggle to hold the plane in a climb.
Seeing that Todd was determined to ignore her request, Téa glanced at the yoke that was in front of her position, most planes having two sets of controls. It looked like a normal steering wheel. It must work the same way. Grabbing it, she suddenly yanked it to the right, resolving to get the plane turned around on her own. What she didn’t realize was an airplane is turned by using both the ailerons, controlled by the yoke, and the rudder, controlled by foot pedals. Using only one, as Téa did when she hauled on the yoke, put the plane into a skid, or uncoordinated flight, a very unstable and dangerous condition. Thrown suddenly back in his seat as she inadvertently pitched the nose up and into a near stall, Todd reacted quickly, over-powering her movements on his own yoke, and using the rudder pedals to bring the plane back on course and into coordinated flight. “Are you crazy?” he yelled. “Do you want to kill us both?” Eyes narrowing dangerously he said, “Maybe you just like aerobatics, huh? How’s this?” Without warning, he banked the plane hard to the right, tipping the aircraft up on its wing so Téa was looking directly at the ground out of her side window. She gasped as he abruptly banked the craft back to the left, leaving her pointed straight up to the sky. Finally, he straightened out, using the compass and directional indicator to find his original course. The violent up and down sensation of the maneuver had played havoc with Téa’s stomach and she swallowed hard, trying to control the bitter bile she felt burning in her throat. Clutching her stomach, she turned to her companion.
“You bastard,” she growled, her eyes narrow. Todd chuckled nastily.
“It’s nice to know you remember that, Delgado. I was worried you’d have forgotten me by now.”
“And what about Starr, huh Todd?” she shouted over the engine. “Think she’s forgotten you too?” Todd blanched, and Téa felt a slight twinge of guilt for using the little girl as a weapon. But she was determined to use every means at her disposal to get him to turn the plane around. She was sick to her stomach and deathly afraid of the bouncing aircraft. Once she had her feet firmly back on the ground she could re-double her efforts to get Todd to turn himself in.
“Shut up!” he screamed back. “I’m not going to get into a discussion about my daughter with you, especially not here. Now reach back and get me that chart, unless you want to fly around aimlessly forever.”
“What?” shouted Téa, and seeing her sticking her fingers in her ears, Todd realized that the pressure from the altitude change, coupled with the noisy engine, was preventing her from hearing him clearly. He pulled out a couple of surgical green headsets, known as “Clarks” in the industry, and showed her how to plug hers in. Once they were speaking to each other through the headsets and over the intercom, Todd repeated his request for the chart, using slightly more polite terms.
Glaring at him, Téa fumbled around behind her seat, pulling out a folded map. Todd quickly snatched it out of her hands.
Holding the aircraft steady after checking the instruments again, he took a moment to study the aeronautical chart in front of him. He needed a place to land where he could leave Téa. It had to be some place where he was sure she would be safe, but distant enough from civilization that it would take her a few days to get back in contact with her brother. By the time they joined up again, he would be long gone from Baja, maybe even out of Mexico itself. His eyes lit on the little open circle indicating the dirt runway at Camp René. He had been there before with the Cessna, and it might just be perfect for his needs. Geographically almost due west of Múlege on the Pacific side of the peninsula, it was a small fishing camp popular with American pilots. The runway was fairly decent, and at any given time there were usually ten to twenty tourists camping on the beach, fishing by day and partying by night. The beauty of it was that there was no way in or out except by airplane or hours of bouncing along a dirt road in a motorhome. The nearest phone was at least 20 miles away. Téa would eventually get out, but it would take a while. Meanwhile, the American fisherman would take care of her and keep her safe. Setting the chart on the floor, Todd pulled out his hand-held Global Positioning System, commonly known as a GPS, and began to set the coordinates for Campo René into the computerized machine.
Téa sat nervously, not quite sure what to do next. There were a lot of complicated gages and knobs in front of her, but she had no idea what they did. After the earlier incident when she had grabbed the yoke, she hesitated to touch anything. Stealing a glance at Todd out of the side of her eye, she resolved to wait him out, knowing that he would have to land the plane eventually. When he did, she would do her best to convince him to give himself up, but for now she just had to hold on and survive the flight.
The plane reached an altitude of 6500 feet and Todd began the level-out procedure, adjusting the lean, which controlled the fuel to air mixture, and setting the trim to hold the nose in level flight. He glanced over the terrain, noting that they were just crossing over the mountain range. Checking the GPS, he saw that they had a ground speed of 120 knots, which would give them an estimated time en route of less than 20 minutes. Matter of fact, given the clarity of the early morning, he almost had Campo René in sight, even though they were at least 40 miles away. Satisfied, he turned to look at Téa, allowing himself the luxury of studying her for the first time.
She sat staring straight ahead with her teeth gritted and her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She wore khaki slacks, sandals, a white blouse and a heavy cotton sweater. Her hair was a little shorter than he remembered it, but it still looked incredibly silky and soft. In spite of the scowl on her face, she looked like an angel, and his heart contracted again at the thought that she had betrayed him. As he looked at her, he realized he would have given anything for things to be different, for her presence in Mexico to be an indicator of a desire to be with him out of love instead of a plan to put him in chains. Turning back to the front, he blinked rapidly to clear his eyes, trying to push away any soft thoughts of the woman beside him.
Lost in his musings, he was utterly shocked when the engine began to cough and shudder. Fighting down the icy fear gripping his heart, he quickly adjusted the lean and throttle, and glanced down to make sure the fuel lever was indicating that the plane was using gas from both tanks, and hadn’t been inadvertently turned off. But it was no use. In spite of his efforts, the plane continued to sputter and shake, eventually coming to a dead stop. The sudden silence in the cockpit was deafening, as they watched with a sickening dread as the propeller slowly stopped rotating. “Engine out!” screamed Todd in his head. “Oh my God! I’ve got a real engine out situation, and over mountainous terrain!”
“Todd! What’s the matter?” screamed Téa, gripping the dashboard in terror. “Are we going to crash?” Todd stared at the instruments, frozen in shock for a moment as the gravity of the situation almost failed to register. This couldn’t be happening. This was one of those things you read about in pilot magazines, either shaking your head in horror at the tragic outcome, or applauding the heroism that had averted a near disaster. The plane glided on, slowly starting to sink.
“Turn into the wind, establish best glide speed.” Todd could hear the voice of his flight instructor coming to him from his memories of the many times they had practiced engine out procedures during flight training. From deep within him came the realization that to panic would be to remove all chance they had of coming out of this alive.
“I can’t let Delgado get hurt again,” he told himself as he pitched the nose up and settled the plane at 70 knots indicated or best glide speed. This would buy them the maximum amount of time. Ignoring Téa’s increasing agitation, Todd started frantically fiddling with the engine controls, attempting to restart the engine. After two or three failed attempts, he scanned the instruments, looking for some indication of a problem that would allow him to figure out what was wrong and correct it. Taking a sharp breath, he stared at the fuel gages, not believing what his eyes told him was true. They both showed the red line firmly pegged to the left side--empty. “That can’t be right,” he thought, surprised that he could think rationally at such a moment. “I just dipped the tanks last night and they were full.”
A memory returned quickly of a conversation he had had many months before with some pilots at one of the out of the way beaches with landing strips. It seemed that the high cost of gasoline in Baja had caused some teenagers to concoct a scam to steal the precious fuel for their cars. They would send in their girlfriends to distract the platoon of Federales guarding airplanes parked at some of the more popular strips, like Múlege. The soldiers, being just kids themselves, would flirt with the young ladies, and while they were busy, the boys would quickly siphon gas from the tanks of the aircraft. Todd got a sinking feeling in his stomach. He hadn’t checked the fuel that morning. Delgado had distracted him before he got a chance.
“This is your fault,” he spat. “You just couldn’t leave me alone! Well Delgado, enjoy the irony,” he said bitterly, “because your obsession to see me punished may just cost you your life.” Téa stared at him, a mixture of total terror and uncontrollable anger on her face. But it didn’t take a genius to figure out that this was a poor time for an argument, and she instinctively knew that Todd needed to focus all his mental faculties on the emergency. “Get your shoulder harness on,” he ordered, fumbling with his own. Téa complied although her hands were shaking.
Since fuel exhaustion appeared to be the cause of the dead engine, there was no choice but to attempt an emergency landing. Although he had practiced it numerous times during flight training, it was quite different knowing your life depended on doing it right. Doing some quick mental calculations, Todd figured out that they had about six miles of glide left. He would have to find a suitable landing spot within that distance, quite a difficult task given the heavy brush and the steep slopes of the mountains below them. They had already crossed the summit, and were on the windward side of the range. He didn’t bother trying to find a nearby airport with the GPS, as he would have done in populated territory. There weren’t any towns, let alone airports, out in the desolate wilderness where they found themselves. His eyes raked the terrain below him, searching for any open space or plateau that might provide a flat spot where he could attempt a landing.
The lower slopes of the mountains were riddled with gullies cut into the desert from the infrequent run-off from rainstorms, leaving very little open ground. Nervously, Todd eyed the altitude indicator, feeling his spirits plunge as the hand spun around and around the dial as they slowly got closer to the earth. Finally, having no other choice, he chose an apparently open spot along one gully, hoping that luck and his skill would bring them out of this alive. He took a moment to glance at Téa, noticing that she had her eyes shut tightly. Her lips moved slightly, as though she were praying.
Landings are made into the wind, as the power of it helps to slow the aircraft down to a safe speed. But his chosen landing spot had a very visible downhill slope to it. He didn’t want the extra danger of a high-speed landing—the plane would be hard enough to control over rough terrain as it was. So, Todd resolved to attempt a downwind landing, hoping that a sudden updraft off the mountain slope wouldn’t seal their fate. This plan also gave him the advantage of over-flying the landing spot, allowing him to study it before the critical moment of impact. As they did, he noted a few large saguaro cactuses that hadn’t been visible from a higher altitude. He hoped cactuses were softer than trees.
As he passed the spot where he planned to touch down, he forced himself to relax. A stupid mistake now and it would be all over for them. The big problem with a “dead stick” landing was that the pilot didn’t have the option of fine-tuning his position with the throttle. Turn to final too late, and you would crash before making the landing spot; too early, and you’d over-fly it, smacking into the looming mountain slope ahead. Trusting his instincts were correct, Todd slowly made a shallow turn to the left, keeping his landing spot in sight the whole time. As the plane swung around on final approach, he took care not to pitch the nose up too high. A sudden stall would end things quickly, and not nicely.
“Delgado!” shouted Todd, causing her to open her eyes. She shrieked in terror as she saw that they were hurtling straight for the mountains. “Listen to me! Unlatch the door!” He reached over and demonstrated on his. With shaky hands, Téa obeyed him. Doors were unlatched in a crash landing situation to prevent them from being crushed shut and trapping the occupants. Todd quickly wiped each hand on his jeans to remove the slippery sweat, then used a forearm to clear it from his eyes. Judging that he now had the landing spot made, he fed in 10 degrees of flaps to bring them down more quickly. The mountains were closer than he liked. At the last moment, he reached over and pulled out the lean, remembering stories of dead planes that suddenly sputtered back to life when rotated for landing, a small amount of fuel restarting the engine. In this case that would result in flying them directly into the mountain ahead of them. Todd decided to put in full flaps, and the plane began to fall out of the sky like a rock.
They came down about fifty feet before the clear spot, and Todd flared the airplane by pulling back on the yoke, positioning the craft in a nose up attitude. Skimming along a couple feet above the ground, they floated over the occasional mesquite bush, gritting their teeth as it tore at the main landing gear below them. The plane became heavy and incredibly hard to control. Finally, it just ran out of speed and fell to earth, landing with a hard bump on the desert earth. Now Todd had to struggle with the rudder pedals, fighting to keep the roll-out straight. Veering to either side would plunge them into a gully, lessening their chances of survival considerably. But the plane still had a lot of forward momentum, and a tailwind to boot. The steep mountain slope in front of them was coming up rapidly.
Applying the brakes, Todd was surprised to realize he was praying. “Just let Delgado make it,” he begged. “Do anything you want to me, but don’t let her get hurt.” Suddenly, the right wing contacted a huge cactus, sheering it off. The sickening sound of crunching metal mixed with a terrified scream from Téa. The second saguaro they hit took off the whole outer third of the wing, sending the strut crashing through the window directly toward Téa’s head. She moved just in time, and cowered in her seat, her hands over her face to protect her from the flying glass and debris.
As Todd looked up, he realized he had picked too short of a landing spot, boxing himself in against the mountain. His heart sinking in defeat, he knew there was no way the hurtling plane was going to stop in time. They were going to smack into a sheer cliff with at least 30 miles per hour of energy. At the last possible moment, he made the only move that could give them a chance. Shoving the left rudder and brake all the way to the floor, he ground looped the plane, sending it tilting up on the left wheel, turning it at a right angle to the cliff. The sheered off right wing scraped along the rock, throwing off sparks. But now they were headed straight for the gully, a drop of at least thirty feet. Realizing they were out of options, Todd pushed on the brakes and rammed down on the yoke, hoping that the plane would stop before plunging over into the ravine.
“I love you, Delgado!” he shouted through gritted teeth. And then the world went black.
