BULLETS ON ARRIVAL
by Ron Fox
It was two-thirty, am, on a clear, warm August morning in
the summer of 1982. The stars were shimmering wildly through
the earth’s radiated heat. I had just pulled out of the
7-Eleven on Billy Mitchell Boulevard a mile north of the
Brownsville International Airport with a sandwich, juice and
a quart stainless steel thermos of hot coffee. I was well
rested after spending a week on Nob Hill in San Francisco and
my heart started to beat faster against the Ruger 44 on my chest
as the beginning of my work day neared.
At the fenced perimeter of the field I stopped at the large
gate near the Hunt Pan Am building and slipped my personal key
into the silver padlock next to three other locks on the gate
chain. The eerie silence was broken only by the mournful cry
of a night bird and the occasional yap of a coyote out on the
large grass fields of the airport. The dead calm of night was
suddenly interrupted by the brilliance of the rotating
airport beacon, silently slicing into the darkness like a
swift slashing sabre and then it was gone. Its blade was so
distinct and rapid, my first impulse was to duck. I
almost expected it to make noise as it flew overhead. As I
slowly pulledl onto the tarmac, the airport lights twinkled like
a thousand sparkling jewels; diamonds, sapphires and rubies
laid out in neat rows, as if some giant child had played with
them and left them neatly lined up.
I parked my car – an old, beat up ’68 Chevelle Malibu
coupe, black vinyl top peeling off, paint peeling off
revealing black primer all over the trunk – next to the last
hangar and grabbed my flight bag, survival pack and ammo belt
and strolled nonchalantly towards my old T-Bone. I
pretended, as if in front of an audience, that I was calm.
I was not calm. I knew I was about to become a participant
once again in an exciting, but dangerous game which very few
people were aware of. Just another day at the office . . .
After parking my car by the last hangar before the
Customs area – a wide, fenced off area in front of the Customs
building where all aircraft cleared Customs both in and out –
I walked slowly to the line of aircraft on the ramp in front
of the old hangar. It was very quiet and nothing stirred on the
airport except a slight breeze which rustled some paper along
the hangar wall. This night I was the only person I knew of on the
airport. I found myself making noises just to break the
silence, as if to reassure myself I wasn’t dreaming.
I gave conducted a thorough preflight my aircraft, a 1955 C-50
Twin Bonanza, affectionately known as a T-Bone. I skipped
nothing. The airplane was purchased by my boss at a Sheriff’s
sale in southern Florida just weeks before; dirty and dented
with strange smells inside the cabin. My mind drifted back to
my earlier days when I used to fly legal freight under the
Federal Aviation Regulations known as Part 135. Back then it
was kick the tires, light the fire and go. Not so today. I
just couldn’t afford any mistakes today, not in this game.
The half flat tires on my T-Bone told me I had a
good load, better than a ton by anyone’s guess, hopefully not
much more by mine or I would never get off the ground.
I’ll know for sure a mile down the seven thousand foot
runway, I thought to myself. I pretended not to worry as I removed two Sony
color TV’s from the bench seat up front so I could get in.
As I twisted and turned over a stack of blenders and car
stereos, I thought back again to the old days when I had to
secure my cargo with a net. Not on this day. This cargo is
packed like a jigsaw puzzle into almost every inch of my
plane; it wasn’t going anywhere.
After my contortionist entry, I found myself
uncomfortably close to the controls as I struggled to pull
the two TV’s off the wing and into the plane beside me.
My loaders had wisely allowed just enough spacing for me
to get my hand through the load to close and lock the door.
With such little space and little air, my struggles had
already produced sweat on my face and the windows of the plane.
At least the hard part was over.
Mags on, boost the fuel, hit the starters and the
engines fired right up. I was confident they would or I
just wouldn’t turn them off until I was back in Brownsville.
My T-Bone is a real growler under power, but it’s important
that it purrs like a kitten at this time to indicate smooth running
engines. It did. It started to growl from the power
required to start rolling as I headed for the runway,
checking everything along the way. Now’s the only time for
that. Rotating beacon on. It’s red flashing beam reminded
me of my last speeding ticket. Wing strobes on, their
brilliant white millisecond flashes suspend the props as if
they were suddenly stopped. Taxi light on. It’s long yellow arm
illuminated a wide path into the darkness ahead. Landing
lights on just to check them, then off. Fifty thousand
candle power would destroy your night vision. In the next
few minutes I was going to need all the night vision I could muster..
The tower was closed hours ago. The lack of radio
chatter, coupled with my new David Clark noise-attenuating
headset, increased my sense of aloneness. I may have felt
alone then, but in an hour from then, I would feel like I’m was in outer
space. That’s alone.
With my brakes locked near the end of the runway, I
brought the engines up to power, checking their performance,
intently watching the gauges, feeling and listening for the
slightest cough, burp, vibration or any out-of-the-ordinary
indication of possible trouble. I exercised the props by
varying the blade pitch with the prop levers, carefully
listening and watching the tachometer as the engine RPM
changed smoothly. My confidence was building then as fast as
my reasons for staying on the ground were disappearing.
It was 3:00 am when I took the runway at the
very end. The white runway lights stretched out and converged
to what looked like forever, more than a mile away. More than
a mile away may be forever if I was trying to carry too
much weight. From so far away I could hardly tell the last
two thousand feet of lights were orange. I would be able to
tell soon enough.
Holding the brakes, I smoothly advanced the throttles
to maximum power. It’s foolish to waste runway waiting for
the power to come up. I just may need all the runway I
can get in front of me. The power was up. I quickly scanned
the instruments. The roar of the engines sounded and felt
good. The entire aircraft was wildly champing at the bit as
I softly muttered,”Geronimo,” and released the brakes.
Did I jump into the air? Did I explode out of the
gate like a thoroughbred? No. Like a snail, I slowly
began to crawl forward. After fifty feet of roll I could
walk faster. After a hundred feet I could outrun my
plane. After two hundred feet I could still outrun it.
With agonizing slowness I began to pick up speed. I’ve
had plenty of time to monitor my engines and they were still
OK. A half mile down the runway my airspeed indicator was
reading forty miles per hour, half of what I would need to fly
(if my load wasn’t too heavy and my balance was within
limits). I pulled back on the yoke and the nose rose, I
let it go and the nose fell. So much for balance.
Fifty miles per hour,…fifty-five,….sixty. I was really
really rolling now. The runway lights were whizzing by in a
blur and I clearly saw the fast approaching orange ones
indicating only two-thousand feet of runway remaining.
Sixty-five,…. seventy,….seventy-five,….eighty. I was
still in the white lights so I go went for more. Eighty-
five,…. ninety,…. ninety-five. I was now or never time.
I rotated at the orange lights, the nose came way up the and
the plane began to shudder a little. I saw the end of
runway red lights coming up fast and my plane stopped
shuddering; I must have been off the ground. I no longer felt the
runway under my wheels. It didn’t look like I was
flying, but I must have been. I quickly brought up my landing gear
to get rid of the drag. Quickly, but smoothly, I lowered the nose
a little so that damn stall warning light would go out. It’s
bright and it’s red and I hate to see it on. It rapidly
blinked a half-dozen times and it went out. Cool. The runway is long
gone and I’m at tree top level. Thank goodness there were
no trees.
Just after take off, I was less than two miles from
the Mexican border, so, one by one, I dowsed my lights.
Landing light, navigation lights, rotating beacon; all off.
I disappeared into the blackness of night like a sugar cube melting
in hot coffee, leaving only a trail of sound behind me and
headed due south, well out into the Gulf of Mexico, my engines
straining to give me only three hundred feet per minute of climb.
It’s enough.. It would take me over thirty minutes to reach my
cruising altitude of nine thousand, five hundred feet.
The engine gauges became my prime interest at this point as I looked for signs
of ill health. Oil pressure was up, cylinder head temperature
was up, oil temperature was up; but they were all steady. The
even drone of my augmentor exhaust tubes reassured me in
my quest for altitude. If I lost an engine now, I was
going to die. One remaining engine will normally allow a twin
engine plane to fly, but not mine . . . I was carrying too
much weight. Altitude was the only thing that could save me
now; enough of it to allow my one remaining engine to get
me to the beach in a slow descent. A few thousand more feet
and I could breath easier. It was time to comply with FAA
regulations . . .
“McAllen Radio, this is Beech three niner Foxtrot.
Please open and close my flight plan.”
“Beech three niner Foxtrot, Roger”, McAllen Radio
replies.
I have just opened my VFR (Visual Flight Rules)
flight plan which indicates I will be flying to Tampico.
I immediately closed it so my “official” destination will
not be notified to expect me. I had “changed my mind” as
to where I was going, anyway. So much for regs.
I scanned just above the horizon for my favorite group
of stars, the constellation Southern Cross, and pointed the
nose straight at it. Its steady sparkle has guided me above
the clouds on many lonely nights and I nodded as if in
recognition of an old friend.
“Take me to Vera Cruz, old friend. My old navigation
radios may not be working too well tonight.”
The mexican fishing fleet was out that night, its many
running lights looking like a small floating city. Without a
moon, it was so dark that, from my altitude, their lights
looked like the stars above me. The blending of the dark
water and lights with the dark sky and stars made me feel
like a piece of cosmic dust in the outer space of the
universe. If I stared too long, vertigo would set in because I couln’t
visually determine up or down, so I
concentrated on fllying and the details of my mission. In total darkness, with only a
curtain of stars to look at, I began to notice areas of
darkness with no stars in front of me; patchy at first, but
growing in size. That could only mean one thing.
Clouds up ahead. The Brownsville weather station
satellite photos had indicated areas of clouds along my
route, but their forecast was for no significant
precipitation. As I got closer to the clouds, I
recognized their stratus formation, spread evenly like a
blanket and knew they would produce little turbulence. It’s
the vertical build-ups, or cumulous formations I had to avoid
because at my weight and slow speed I was climbing very
close to stall airspeed and turbulence could easily cause me
to lose control. I learned this the hard way on one of
my first flights when I entered such a build-up. With a
normally loaded aircraft this presents no problem, but, as
heavy as my loads were those days, it was no fun stalling in
turbulence and losing three thousand feet of altitude just
trying to regain control. Tonight I was a couple of hundred
pounds heavier than I was that other night and I’ve learned
the subtleties of flight at what is called the edge of the
envelope. A tightrope, for sure.
It’s hard to calculate how far away the looming stratus
cloud layers were, so I began my two hundred feet per
minute climb at maximum power as soon as I realized that, if
I stayed at my present altitude, I would enter them. I preferred to remain out of them.
Usually, I could get above them and remain below twelve
thousand feet. I knew my heavily loaded T-Bone wouldn’t fly
much higher. While climbing, I entered the clouds, but saw
glimpses of black through the gray above and I was anxious to
climb into the clear. All at once, the gray disappeared and
I found myself skimming the tops as if on a fast snow
sled, my speed magnified by the closeness of the cloud
layer. On top once again, I felt I was the only person in
the universe again, the Southern Cross beckoning me further into
the void. At eleven thousand five hundred feet my T-Bone
wallowed like a slow boat with half a rudder, its nose
pitching slowly up and down with a will of its own, countered
by ever so careful inputs on the yoke. So sensitive is pitch
that if I moved the yoke back until the nose started to move
up, it would already have been too much input and even more pressure forward would
be required to keep the nose down. This can result in the nose
dropping too much and an ever increasing porpoising rhythm
could begin which could end up in loss of control. But I had had
lots of practice flying by my fingertips and only
concentration and finesse were required. So much so that I
was surprised to look out my left window and see the sky on
the eastern horizon as it began to pale from the rising sun. The
stars gave way to blue nether and slowly began to disappear.
Unfortunately so did the cloud layers. Soon, with the sun
above the horizon and the clouds behind me, even though I
was over fifty miles from land over the Gulf, there would be
no place to hide if I was detected by the dreaded airborne
Mexican Customs Service. The fact that I was a needle in a
haystack helped my nerves a little, but I would soon be over enemy
territory. Still night, on my right I could see the beautiful
lights of Tampico which told me I was half way to my
destination: a cow pasture near the coast, south of Vera
Cruz. At least being able to see the coast helped me to
navigate although with working navigation radios, sight of
land wasn’t important until I get much lower. It was going to
be a beautiful day in Mexico and at least daylight made me
feel a part of the world again, as if back from a long space
voyage.
The blue sky to the east was rapidly taking over the
black of night as I saw the mountains east of Mexico City
emerge from the darkness out of my right window. I thought
of the other T-Bone I had left in a heap in those mountains one
dark night a few months ago. And then, in a cascade, my
mind raced through my other close calls in the past year:
the runway blockade I had to jump over in Jalapa, the bent
nosegear on the open range southeast of Mexico City, the
narrow highway south of Mexico City that almost ate my
Beech Baron, the treetop approach under the fog in a DC-3
over the lake south of Vera Cruz where I really did clip
five or six feet off a palm tree, the near miss of a
mountain top in the clouds north of Jalapa. Stories of
compadres just as exciting flash by: Getting shot down just
south of Brownsville, shooting it out with the Federales,
crashing into a mountain top west of Jalapa, stalling a DC-3
on a dirt strip downwind, hitting powerlines after an engine
failure in a DC-4; they go on and on. I wonder how I’ve
managed to survive this long, and vow to begin planning my
retirement after only a few more missions. At a thousand
dollars a trip, I had done very well. Besides, who could
quit on their ninety-ninth mission?. I wondered if I was
hooked on the money or the adrenalin, then I realized it was
probably both.
As the eight thousand foot ridge east of Jalapa glided
by, I pulled a little power and started a slow descent. I had
drifted a little too close to the coast and I adjusted my course
seaward to avoid detection from the army and navy bases of
Vera Cruz which would soon be visible further south.
Ordinarily unrestricted visibility makes a pilot feel good,
but when the sun finally came up today, I only felt
naked. Still fifty miles north of Vera Cruz, where the city
should appear by now, I could barely see the coast north of
town. The south surface wind was blowing the city’s air
pollution north and out over the Gulf. Pollution normally
looks repugnant. It’s funny how this job changes one’s
perceptions and values. This smog looked great to me
as it was providing cover..
With the extra airspeed of my descent, my plane had
stopped wallowing and acted more like an airplane. In fifteen
minutes I was abeam the city and about twenty miles out into
the Gulf. If I could barely see the city, the city couldn’t
possibly see me, still a speck in the sky.
It was time to call Julian, my ground crew chief, on the
FM radio and let him know I was inbound. This is a very
important phase of my mission because it would be now that I
found out if the strip was secure, the weather was OK and
whether it would be safe to land. If I heard the code word “OK” at
any time, I would just turn around and go home after telling
Julian I had a mechanical problem and couldn’t land. This
prearranged code word would tell me if the strip is unsafe,
possibly by obstructions, possibly by someone’s gun held to
Julian’s head.
“Julian, this is Blue Star One.”
At once the radio crackled back with Julian’s familiar
voice: “Blue Star One, this is Julian, how far out are you?”
“Twenty minutes, how’s the strip?”
“Good, good. See you in twenty minutes.”
The radio was alive now with chatter in spanish. Julian
barking orders and questions, many voices answering. Julian
must have been checking on the strip’s defense perimeter. Walkie-
talkies abounded with more chatter on our discreet frequency
and everything seemed normal. I knew the ground crew,
consisting of about a dozen Mexicans with walkie-talkies and
guns, have secured the only dirt road into the strip about a
half mile in both directions and having set up a half-mile
defense perimeter with at least six guards. Another six
unloaders and Julian would be at the rollout end of the cow
pasture with trucks to unload me. Two more crews would be
waiting to pour gas in my outboard wing fuel tanks for the
return trip home. Had there been a problem of any kind at
the strip, I should have found out on my initial contact
and would have had just barely enough gas to make it home.
In another fifteen minutes I would reach the point of no
return and have to land. Just two days before I had
brought in a DC-3 to this strip with three hundred and
seventy five color TV’s and the strip was dry. It looked like
this one would be a snap.
Now passed Vera Cruz by twenty miles, I pulled back on
the power and began to lose altitude quickly, turning inland
seeing the lake which is just a few miles south of my
strip. There was the highway running south out of Vera Cruz and
I began scanning the ground in front of me for my first
visual checkpoint, a five story grain silo next to the
highway. Rapidly descending to five hundred feet at exactly
one hundred and twenty miles an hour which is two miles per
minute, I lined up on the silo pointing my nose on a one-
hundred-seventy degree heading as I passed over it.
Adjusting for wind, I flew for two minutes, looking for my
next checkpoint, a burned out shell of an old barn. Turning
exactly due east, I flew for another minute looking intently
for my strip, there,… There was the pineapple field
adjacent to my cow pasture. There were the trucks, Julian’s
bright red one was gleaming in the morning light.
“I see you” crackled Julian’s voice on the FM radio.
“Land to the north!”
“Roger”, I replied.
I dropped down low for my first pass over the strip.
Only a couple of hundred feet over the strip, I searched the
area for anything out of the ordinary; extra trucks too far
from the strip, extra people out of normal position, khaki
uniforms or uniforms of any kind, anything strange. It looked
good as I turned for a low downwind leg, flaps down, landing
gear down, power up. With weather like this and a gentle
breeze, my twenty seven hundred foot strip posed no
problem. I sure couldn’t land with the wind at my back or
if the grass was very wet. At the north end of the strip is a
barbed wire fence. At the south end is a rock bordered creek.
No overruns are allowed here.
With full flaps and an extra ten knots of airspeed, I
started a high sink rate in close to hit the approach end of
the strip just north of the rocks bordering the creek. The
extra airspeed was used up rapidly in my nose-up flare and,
as I slammed onto the ground, I brought up my flaps to put
more weight on my main wheels. I started heavy braking
immediately and was relieved to feel myself slowing. A
thousand feet down the strip I knew it would be an easy
stop. Judging from the trucks directly in front of me near
the fence, Julian must have known it too, because he jumped out of
his truck to greet me long before I stopped. At the end of
the strip I turned around and faced south, shutting off my
engines. At last I could relax. I wiped my eyes, yawn
and stretch and heaved a sigh of relief. It was all downhill
from here.
Immediately, two young mexicans jumped up on my right
wing. Because of the slight shift of cargo packed beside
me, I couldn’t reach the door handle. The young ground
handler must have been new. He was fumbling with the flush door
handle, unable to open it. I was already half way through
my first cigarette when the door was finally opened. I
didn’t know it yet, but his fumbling had just saved my life.
Getting hot in the cabin with no airflow inside, I was
relieved when the door popped open and a rush of cool morning
air dissipated the built up heat and humidity. The young
grinning mexican pulled one big TV out and then another. He
passed them down the wing to eagerly awaiting hands, formed
in a line to load the truck. The young man stepped aside to
let me out. I saw two men already pouring gas into my
outboard fuel tank through a large funnel stuck in the top of
my right wing.
As I stepped onto the wing with Julian’s six-pack of Lite
beer held high, he shouted a friendly greeting: “Hi Ron!”.
Suddenly I heard two loud pops in quick succession.
Immediately Julian looked to his right and admonished
someone in his crew in spanish on the radio, as if telling someone to
knock off the clowning around.
Someone must have been trigger-happy.
Three seconds later, the entire strip erupted into gun
fire. The pops were coming from every direction, being
returned from the crew on the ground. Mexicans started
screaming and scattering like rabbits in every direction.
Julian looked up on the wing at me, pointed at me and yelled, “Go Ron!”,
and leap into his truck.
As I fell backward into my plane, I saw a man
fall on the ground to my right, an AR-15 semi-automatic
rifle stuck barrel down into the ground beside him. The
trucks began to move away from my plane’s tail as I hit
the seat, the door still wide open. Quickly, I switched on
both engines’ magnetos and advanced both throttles to maximum.
Leaving both mixture controls to fuel cutoff for a hot start, I reached for
the starter switches. Suddenly a TV exploded in the back of
the plane, then another. I thought to myself, “This is
like an old movie, only I’m in it!”
I felt bullets hitting the plane and glanced to my
right through the open door. There, not ten paces from my
right wing was a man dressed in khakis and a black ball cap,
pointing a carbine at me, shooting. As they say in the old
movies, “the jig was up”. Not three blades into my start,
I raised my hands in surrender. The Iguana (Customs
agent) off my right wing lowered his carbine. The twacks of
bullets hitting my plane stopped, but the gunfire all over
the strip continued. The trucks were roaring away and
Mexicans were still running in all directions, but this old
movie was over for me. I had been captured at gunpoint.
Ever since the bullets started flying, time had slowed down.
Every occurrence seemed played out in slow motion. Strange,
incongruous thoughts were unwinding slowly in my head. It
seemed events were moving with lightening speed, but every
action was taking forever. I thought to myself: “Well, now
I’ll be able to do at least four things I’ve always
wanted to accomplish: learn to speak spanish, write a book,
lose weight and learn to play the guitar. And, it should
only take nine years to do all that!”.
Not three seconds after lowering his carbine, the Iguana
raiseed his carbine and began shooting at me again, my
hands still held above my head. In a microsecond, the old
movie was back. If this bastard was going to keep
shooting, I was going to keep escaping! I reached over,
yelling an appropriate phrase, and grabbed the door handle, slamming
the door hard. I fell over on my left side and lay down on the seat.
I raised my left hand and started cranking both engines,
wondering what a bullet up the ass would feel like as bullets
once again began thumping into my plane. Suddenly, the
right engine roared to life and I quickly jammed the mixture up
with my right hand to keep it running. I felt the airplane lurch to the
left, swinging its tail towards my attacker. Quickly, I
raised my right foot over my left leg and stomped on the
right brake. This was no time to be going in circles, or was
it? In just a few seconds, the left engine roared to life
and, ramming the left mixture forward, I let go of
everything and just remained stretched out on the seat. With rounds still
hitting the airplane and glass from TV picture tubes flying
all over the cabin, the aircraft began to move and I noticed the strange
smell of whatever gases that used to be inside those TV’s permeating the cabin..
I have no idea what direction I was going, and didn’t
really care . . . yet. After what seemed like a long time, but
what was really only a few seconds of roll, I grabbed the top
of the instrument panel and pull myself up, peeking over the dash.
By this time the strip was practically empty of people,
at least near me. I sat up, crouching as low as I could
and steered my plane towards the south end of the strip.
Almost a third of the strip was behind me now, and I
realized that I still had a full load on the airplane.
My second sinking thought was of the slight chance I had
of clearing that creek in so short a takeoff run. Suddenly,
still rolling agonizingly slow, the nosegear started to
shudder violently. There goes the nose tire, I thought. It must have
caught a bullet. How will I ever make it out of here now?
Sitting straight up now, I pulled the yoke all the way back
into my lap and the nose came up a little. With my slow
speed, it wasn’t off the ground, but at least with some weight
off of it, it stopped shuddering.
This was no time to relax. I planted both feet squarely
on the rudder pedals and pushed myself firmly back into the
seat. I shook my head, blinked my eyes and looked at the
airspeed indicator, that old faded white needle was bouncing a
bit, right around the forty miles-per-hour mark. I looked
outside directly in front of my windshield, half the strip
was behind me. I looked back inside at my airspeed, it
said forty-five. Back outside, I saw the creek, with its
bank of rocks not fifteen hundred feet away. I was
pulling as hard as I could on the yoke without realizing it.
I didn’t notice if there were people around me anymore or
not. I didn’t notice if any bullets were whizzing through
my plane or not. I was not aware of anything around me
except the upcoming creek and my ever-so-slowly increasing
airspeed. Wide-eyed, I looked at my airspeed again, then
the creek, then my airspeed. I didn’t even blink between
the two. Airspeed fifty, creek getting closer. My heart
was beating faster now. I was also breathing very fast as I
began to have a sinking feeling that things didn’t look very good.
My little bird is squawkin’ big-time in my head: “Those
rocks are three feet tall. You’re not going to have enough
airspeed to fly. You’re not going to make it. Pull the
throttles back! Hit the brakes! You can still stop!”
If someone had been sitting beside me with a stopwatch
timing the rest of this takeoff, I doubt the rest of this
immediate fright would have lasted more than fifteen seconds
for either of us, (me and that stupid little bird in my head). But, since
I was freaking out alone, it seemed to take forever.
Airspeed fifty-five, the creek was now less than a
thousand feet away. The nose was feeling lighter so I moved
the yoke a little forward, ready for the shudder, knowing
I was going to need some elevator in order to pull the
airplane off the ground. Airspeed sixty, creek looming
fast. My mind was racing – will I need ninety to fly?
Eighty? After flying almost four hours, how close to max
gross weight am I? I need to lower the nose more to
reduce the drag of your wings, but I can’t afford my flat
nose tire to drag me down even more. I lowered the nose a
little more in a compromise.
Airspeed sixty-five, the creek was coming up fast now,
maybe five hundred feet to go. It doesn’t feel good. I
need more lift!
The flaps. Put down my flaps! I leaned forward,
pushed the button on the panel that lowers my flaps. Only a
couple of seconds to go before hitting the creek!
What the hell, die from a bullet or die in a plane
crash. I’ve crashed planes before. There’s nothin’ to it.
It doesn’t even hurt a bit. It hurts when you wake up, if
you wake up. But by then, you’re so happy to be alive, you
don’t care if it hurts. But a bullet? Never been shot
before. It must hurt. Go for it. I’ve gotta get off the
ground!
At the last possible moment, I lowered the nose for just
a second, then pulled the yoke all the way back into my gut
with my left hand. My right hand was on the throttles,
bending them forward in full power. The nose came up high
off the ground. Braced for the jolt of snagging the rocks
and ready to react instantly to the resulting swerve in one
direction or the other, the creek zipped by in a blur. I
grabbed the landing gear handle and threw it up. I had to
get the gear up fast to reduce the drag! The red stall light
was on steady and the airplane was in a stall buffet, settling
closer to the ground in what looked like a lower than landing
altitude. I jerked the yoke left then right, trying to
counteract the airplane’s wallowing, almost out of control.
I must have by then been mowing the grass south of that creek. Lucky
for me there’s only grass out there.
For some reason I looked out at my right wing just as
the twelve inch funnel popped out of the top of my wing and
disappeared to the rear in a steady white flow of gasoline
being sucked out of my open fuel tank. The airplane
swerved to the left. I straightened it with right yoke and
right rudder. I was afraid to pull the nose up because if
I stalled the nose will drop into the ground. I couldn’t let
the nose fall an inch because there was nothing but ground
below me. I was on a tightrope and could only hold what
I had. Looking over the panel at the ground ahead – I
dared not look at anything else – I was only reacting then to
visual stimuli, much like a video game. I was not aware of
pushing, pulling or turning the yoke, nor of pushing the
rudder pedals left or right. I dared not take my eyes off
the blessedly flat terrain ahead, but out of the corner of
my eye I noticed that big red stall light beginning to
blink. Blinking is better than being on steady. My speed must have been increasing! I quickly glanced
down. I was doing eighty-five. With this plane normally
loaded, I should have been flying fine at sixty-five. This heavy,
I’m lucky to be flying at all at eighty-five. The stall
light goes off, the airplane slowly stopped wallowing. At last
I could gingerly raise the nose and begin climbing as I
slowly turned back north for the gulf and home. I glanced at
the cylinder head temperature gauge, then the oil pressure,
then the oil temperature. Did a bullet puncture an oil line?
A cylinder? A hydraulic line? From gauge to gauge I scanned
the panel, looking for anything unusual. Everything seemed
fine except the shaking of my knees and hands. What a
great time for a cigarette. That’s right, both hands on the
lighter, a big drag on my Marlboro, a heavy sigh of relief
as I exhaled. Whew! That was a close one.
Very suddenly the loud growl and vibration of my
engines just stopped. Both of them. The nose dropped of its own
accord and the sudden cessation of sound left me in
what seemed like complete silence. Only the faint whistling
of wind was apparent as my mind returned to high gear. Here
we go again, I think. Two words escape from my lips; the
two last words usually uttered by pilots of misfortune: “Aw
shit!”.
The words have scarcely left my lips before I was
grabbing for the fuel selectors on the floor of the cockpit,
returning my engine fuel feeds to tanks that have fuel in
them. There was no longer a white stream of fuel escaping
from the top of my right wing. It was empty. I turned on
my electric fuel boost pumps and waited for the fuel to reach
my engines. I pulled back the throttles to a low power
setting so the sudden surge of power wouldn’t blow a jug, and
wait. Just as suddenly as they stopped, my engines sputtered back
to life. Smoothly applying power, I raised the nose back
into a climb, but, before I could breath a sigh of relief,
I smelled a strange smell. It smells like smoke. Was it
electrical smoke? Was something burning? I could see smoke
then, coming from the floor! “Aw shit!” (There were those famous words again).
It’s my cigarette I had dropped on the carpeting when
I scrambled for the fuel selectors. I thought to myself:
This has got to stop. Holding the yoke with my left hand, I
jumped to the right of the bench seat and began beating the fire
out with my feet, sneezing and coughing. No telling what was
burning in that ancient carpeting.
At least I burned as much gas out of that tank as I
could before it was all sucked out. I was climbing again.
I was heading north again, straight out over the Gulf
towards Brownsville. If something went wrong with my
plane between here and there, I’m going to be some shark’s
breakfast, but I don’t have the fuel to follow the curving
coastline back home. What the hell. I had to take my
best shot.
I climbed up to eleven thousand feet. I pulled the
props back to minimum speed and pulled the power back to
minimum, max-range power. I smoked one cigarette after
another and marveled at my shaking knees as I concentrated
on flying smoothly to conserve fuel.
Too often I looked at my fuel gauges, the needles
bouncing around empty. When they began to settle down, too
close to empty, I gave the left side panel a little slam
with my knee and they started bouncing around further off
empty again. I know they’re not accurate at all but, the
further the needles are off from empty, the better I felt.
I found myself knocking the panel often with my knee.
I settled down to at least two more hours of cruising,
wondering if I’d make it back. I thought to myself, ” I
have to make it back. This will be the best story I’ve ever
been able to tell.” Then I realize that the best stories
probably never get told. They die with the would be
storyteller. A chilling thought, indeed.
The minutes tick by slowly as I relived the amazing
details of what I had just been through. Everything
happened so fast, yet I was able to recall the smallest
details. I am amazed that so many things could have
happened differently, any of which could have ended this event
in my own personal tragedy. A bullet in a different place
in my plane, a bullet in me, hitting that creek with my
wheels, hitting the ground with my props, a soft spot of
ground when my nose tire went flat. Damn. The nose tire.
I was going to have to land in Brownsville with a flat nose
tire!
A half hour out of Brownsville, in order to comply with
regulations concerning penetration of the Air Defense
Identification Zone, I called the McAllen Flight Service
Station to open my inbound flight plan.
“McAllen radio, this is Beech three nine foxtrot.”
“Three niner foxtrot, this is McAllen radio.”
“Please open my inbound flight plan and notify
Brownsville Customs I will be arriving in thirty minutes.”
“Three niner foxtrot, roger”, McAllen radio replies.
The formalities out of the way, I began a slow, range-
extending descent into Brownsville. My fuel gauges were
resting solidly on empty now, not moving in spite of a good knee
slam.
I advised McAllen Radio, “McAllen Radio, three nine
foxtrot, out of eleven thousand in a cruise descent.”
“Three niner foxtrot, roger. Contact Valley approach on
one-one-niner point five.”
“Three nine foxtrot, roger.”
Switching frequencies, I called Valley approach:
“Valley approach, Beech three nine foxtrot, out of six
thousand, field in sight.”
“Beech three niner foxtrot, Valley approach, roger.
Cleared for a visual approach, runway one three right, make a
right downwind. Altimeter two-niner-niner-zero. Contact
Brownsville tower on one-one-eight point niner.”
“Beech three nine foxtrot, roger.”
“Brownsville tower, this is Beech three nine foxtrot on
a visual for one three right.”
“Beech three niner foxtrot, cleared to land runway one
three right, wind one-eight-zero at eight.”
“Three nine foxtrot, roger. Sir, I might not be able to
make it to a taxiway off the runway, I think my nose tire is
flat.”
“Three niner foxtrot, roger. Do you need any
assistance?”, the tower asked, meaning: Do you want us to
roll the crash trucks?
“Negative, sir. I’ll let you know if I can’t make it
off the runway.”
“Three niner foxtrot, roger.”
Sweeping around on a high downwind approach, I knew
I would make it to the airport now, even if I ran out of
fuel. Losing altitude quickly, I lined up with the runway
and set her down real easy, holding the nose off as long as
I could. As I slowed on the runway, using no brakes, I
gently lowered the nose onto the runway. At first it felt
normal, then it began a violent shaking, slowing the airplane
quickly. Seeing an intersecting runway coming up, I
pulled off onto it and stopped, thinking I can’t make
the next taxiway. I advised the tower: “Tower, three nine
foxtrot. I’m going to have to stop here because of a flat
tire.”
“Three niner foxtrot, roger, we appreciate that. We
have a tug coming your way to tow you in.”
“Three nine foxtrot, roger, I appreciate that.”
I pulled the mixtures back to fuel-cutoff and the
engines came to a stop. Quiet at last. One by one, I
turned off my many switches. The flight was over.
Opening the door, I walked out into the sunshine and
it felt good on my skin and face. Climbing down the wing
onto the runway, I kneeled down and kissed the ground. This
isn’t the first time I had done that, but I decided it
would be the last.
Walking around my plane I noticed the bullet holes
in several places. One in the right engine nacelle. Three
in the ride side of the cabin. Two in the right flap
assembly, a bullet hole in the nose tire; all from the right
side. Walking around to the other side, I didn’t see any
holes. There must have been only one guy shooting at me.
Then I see the bullet. It is embedded in the metal blade
of my left prop about three inches from the hub. Looking
at the angle of the bullet as it was stuck there, I realized
that someone had shot at me from the left side as well as
the right. If that prop blade had not stopped that bullet
it may have hit me while I was in the cockpit.
This was my last smuggling trip. I had left a
number of friends in Mexico who would never return. Maybe
I had finally chickened out, lost my nerve. But maybe
I had finally just gotten a little smarter.
Copyright 1998.