Fangs Out (16 page)

She reached under her desk and pushed a button, electronically unlocking the glass door.

“Have an
extremely
safe flight,” Kimberly said as we walked out to the flight line.

Have a
good
flight. Have a
nice
flight. Those are among the standard salutations uttered by people in aviation. They might even say, “Have a safe flight.” But to have an
extremely
safe flight?

I wondered if Kimberly wasn’t some sort of visionary.

Nine

“M
ontgomery Tower, Four Charlie Lima is ready, 2-8 right.”

“Skyhawk Four Charlie Lima, hold short 2-8 right, landing traffic.”

“Charlie Lima’s holding short, 2-8 right.”

We were buckled in, the three of us wearing headsets, the
Ruptured Duck’s
engine humming at idle, all set to go. Detective Rosario was riding shotgun. Lawless hunkered in the back. His white dress shirt was one big sweat ring.

“Make sure your belts are nice and tight,” I said.

“I can’t believe you talked me into doing this,” Lawless said to his partner, glancing around the
Duck
’s passenger cabin like a trapped animal.

“We’ll be fine,” Rosario kept saying as if to convince him and herself that we actually might.

“Relax, kids. I haven’t lost a passenger yet.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” Lawless said.

I could smell their adrenaline.

I triple-checked to make sure the
Ruptured Duck
’s fuel selector was set to both tanks; that the fuel-air mixture control knob was all the way in; that the flaps and trim were properly set; that oil pressure was up and cylinder head temperature down; and that my window and both doors were closed and latched, then watched a red-over-white Cirrus float in on final approach. It crossed the numbers, flaring a bit high, before settling down on the runway. After the Cirrus turned off onto an adjacent taxiway, the tower controller radioed:

“Skyhawk Four Charlie Lima, wind two-five-zero at five, cleared for takeoff, runway 2-8 right, right downwind departure approved.”

“Four Charlie Lima, cleared for takeoff, 2-8 right, right downwind departure.”

I eased the throttle forward, just enough to get the
Ruptured Duck
rolling, and slowly taxied out, steering with rudder pedals and toe brakes until we were facing straight down the runway. I set the directional gyro to 280 degrees, aligned with the runway’s magnetic heading, and checked the orange windsock to confirm that the wind was still more or less out of the west.

“Any final requests?”

“Not funny,” Lawless said.

“Definitely not funny,” Rosario said.

She made the sign of the cross as I advanced the throttle and we began rolling, picking up speed. I checked my engine instruments—all were showing proper indications—and rotated as we accelerated past sixty-five knots, pulling back gently on the yoke. The
Duck’s
nose rose into the air, sniffing the sky, tentatively at first, and just like that, we were climbing.

And then we weren’t.

Things went from “A-OK” to “Uh-oh” in about two seconds. The engine revved out-of-control and began screaming like a jilted lover. Oil splattered the windscreen.

“Is it
supposed
to do that?” Rosario said. Her eyes were as big as Kennedy half-dollars.

There’s an adage in flying: “You don’t have to take off, but you do have to land.” We definitely had to land. We were 200 feet above the ground with substantially less than 1,000 feet of runway remaining below us. Past the end of the runway, running perpendicular to it, was busy Highway 163. I had a decision to make: either put down on what little runway I had left and try to stop before slamming into freeway traffic; or turn right, keep flying, and hope the
Ruptured Duck
’s engine held out long enough to get us to the much longer runways at Miramar, former home of the Navy’s famed “Top Gun” fighter weapons school, about three miles to the north. The decision was made for me.

The engine seized.

The propeller froze. The airspeed indicator swung down instantly to zero. I instinctively pushed the
Ruptured Duck’s
nose hard over, avoiding the imminent stall, and dove. I probably should’ve said something classically pilot-like and reassuring to my passengers along the lines of, “This one might be cutting it a little close.” Instead, don’t ask me why, I blurted out, “Whoa, Nelly.”

Any landing you can walk away from, as the old saw goes, is a good landing; any landing after which you can reuse the airplane is a great landing. I had a bad feeling this landing was going to be neither.

“C’mon,
Duck.
Don’t do this to me now.”

I wondered how many people on the ground were taking cell phone videos of us at that minute. Nothing beats an air crash when it comes to entertainment value. Ships sinking are like watching paint dry compared to planes going down. Likewise train derailments. Unless you’re one of those creepy old dudes who wear Casey Jones caps and get turned on by miniature choo-choos chugging around and around through some fake little countryside they’ve constructed in their basement, does anybody truly care when real trains upend real grain silos out in the hinterlands?

I would’ve charged admission, but it all happened too fast.

I disengaged the master switch and flipped the fuel selector lever to “off” to minimize the chances of fire, then hauled back on the elevator at the last possible second, as far as it would go, raising the nose to something approaching a landing flair. The maneuver arrested our descent, but not by much. The
Ruptured Duck
belly-flopped, bounced limply back into the air like a corpse on a trampoline, then back down again. We quickly ran out of runway and skidded onto unpaved ground, heading for the freeway. I stood on the toe brakes. The Cessna careened sideways, ground looped, then pitched onto its back and slid in a groaning, grinding blizzard of dirt clods and dust.

And then, no more than twenty feet from the freeway frontage road, abruptly, mercifully, we stopped.

All was silent inside the airplane. I could smell gas fumes, but there was no fire. I made a quick inventory of my parts. Everything still seemed to be working. I looked over at Rosario, then back at Lawless as the three of us hung upside down in our seat belts. Except for a small cut on Lawless’s forehead, both detectives appeared unhurt.

“Everybody OK?”

“What kind of stupid-ass question is that?” Lawless shouted. “No, I am not OK! You nearly got us killed!”

“Well, that’s certainly one way to spin it. I prefer to look at it from the sunny side. Think how long you would’ve had to stand in line at Disneyland to get on a ride as thrilling as that.”

“You think this is some kind of joke? Go fuck yourself, asshole. Now, get me the hell out of here!”

Yet another satisfied customer. Thanks for flying Logan Airways.

I could hear sirens approaching. I told Lawless to relax and that I’d help him and Rosario out of the plane.

Escaping the wreckage required nothing more than unlatching my door. I unbuckled my seat belt, sort of half-rolled out of the upturned airplane, then hustled around to the other side to give Rosario an assist as she crawled out on her hands and knees. Lawless was right behind her. I offered him my hand. He pushed it aside.

“I don’t want your goddamn help,” he said.

With my passengers safe, I surveyed the damage:

The
Ruptured Duck
’s right wing was crumpled from strut to wingtip. The tailfin and right side of the horizontal stabilizer were crushed. The prop was bent at one end like a pipe cleaner, and the nose wheel twisted at a grotesque angle that reminded me of Joe Theismann’s leg after that sack by Lawrence Taylor. I tried to get mad at my airplane for having failed me, but I couldn’t. The
Duck
had absorbed the force of the crash and saved our lives.

“Nice job, old buddy,” I whispered, patting his scraped and dented fuselage.

“Now
that
was a rush,” Rosario said, smiling and trembling at the same time. “Not that I’d want to do it every day.”

There was no ready explanation as to why the
Duck’s
engine had abruptly failed. I’d been meticulous in its maintenance. Never once had anything that would be considered a major problem. I knew that federal aviation officials would investigate to determine the cause of the crash. They would invariably blame it on me, if only to reassure other pilots who fly Cessna 172’s, the most popular airplane ever built, that the same type of accident couldn’t possibly happen to them because of mechanical malfunction. But there was no time to concern myself with that now.

A red San Diego fire engine pulled up, lights flashing. Three firefighters garbed head-to-toe in silver, Area 51-style hazmat suits climbed down from the truck. Two of them, armed with handheld extinguishers, began spraying down the plane even though there were no flames to fight. The third carried a medical kit and asked us if we required treatment.

“This man is a menace!” Lawless said, pointing at me as the firefighter tried to examine the cut on his forehead. “I’m placing him under arrest for attempted murder.” Lawless pushed the fireman aside, reached for his handcuffs and ordered me to turn around.

“Kurt, it was an accident,” Rosario said. “Be happy you’re alive. I am. I’m ecstatic, in fact. Now, why don’t you let the nice firefighter have a look at that cut?”

“He told us it was safe. Is that not what he said?” Lawless was breathing hard. “Well, it’s definitely not safe! We could’ve died, Rosario. And he knew it.”

Lawless grabbed my wrist to cuff me. I spun out of his hold.

“Listen to your partner, Detective. It was an accident.”

“Resisting arrest
and
attempted murder. That’s it!”

Again Lawless moved to handcuff me. Again I twisted free. Enraged, he pulled out his Glock.

“Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

“Whoa,” the firefighter said, raising his own hands, “this is the freakiest plane crash I’ve ever responded to.”

“You’re being an idiot, Lawless,” Rosario said. “I’m lead investigator on this case. Now, either holster your pistol, and I mean right now, or I swear, I
will
report you to internal affairs on an out-of-policy weapons draw.”

Lawless eyeballed Rosario. He eyeballed me. Then, like some petulant little boy made to put away his playthings, he angrily holstered his gun and let the nice fireman patch up his face.

Rosario got out her phone and said she was calling authorities in Yuma to have them pick up Bunny and his cousin before they could hightail it across the border. She still didn’t trust the cops in Arizona, she said, but under the circumstances, there was no alternative.

I gazed forlornly at the
Ruptured Duck
and wondered when, if ever, he would play again among the clouds. Considering my airplane represented my sole source of income, the same could’ve just as easily been asked of me.

T
HE CRASH
led the nightly news on every TV station in San Diego. Three news helicopters orbited Montgomery Airport, relaying aerial shots of the
Ruptured Duck
, while reporters filed stand-ups live from the scene. They interviewed anybody they could find who’d claimed to have seen the crash, and even some who admitted they hadn’t. One old guy, who wore a 56th Fighter Group baseball cap and was identified as a former airline pilot, said he was in his hangar overlooking the flight line and could tell from the strained pitch of the
Duck’s
engine that a crash was imminent. But the most compelling eyewitness account came from a delivery van driver named Jay for “Pampered Bottoms Diaper Service” who said he happened to look over while cruising the frontage road to northbound Highway 163 with a truckload of soiled nappies, glimpsed the stricken
Duck
diving straight toward him, and “about crapped my pants.”

The worst part of all was that the newshounds had apparently checked the
Duck
’s tail number online and quickly determined my identity. Within an hour of my having debriefed various airport and local law enforcement authorities about the crash, yours truly was all over the airwaves. The story even led the news more than 200 miles away, in Rancho Bonita, where the local anchorwoman, a twenty-three-year-old former Miss Avocado Festival winner who couldn’t read from a TelePrompTer if the fate of the free world depended on it, got my name wrong, along with almost everything else:

“Topping the news tonight, a Rancho Bonita flight instructor identified by authorities as Cordell Hogan was seriously injured today along with three of his passengers when their small jet crashed while trying to make an emergency landing at a San Diego area airport. Witnesses said the airplane narrowly avoided hitting a bread truck.”

Among those watching, only because it was summer and there were no football games on, was my landlady, who called to make sure I was still breathing.

“I’m fine, Mrs. Schmulowitz. All’s well that ends well.”

“Listen, I know you love flying, Bubeleh,” she scolded me over the phone as I drove back to Hub Walker’s house, “but if human beings were meant to fly, God would’ve made it a lot easier to find parking at the airport.”