A little more from "The Pilot"...OR what to do when stranded at night at an airport....in a stolen airplane...
Excerpts from "The Pilot" written by Sean Corey...........
"Possession
Stealing the plane was easy. It had gone like clockwork. Flying it from Seattle to the Cartels private airstrip in Virginia was becoming a bit more problematic. The proud kidnapped bird was straining my wits and testing my endurance. It was already dark over the northern Utah desert and I was on my second day out of Boeing field. I was only a third of the way to safety and fulfilling a non-negotiable rendezvous with Cory and Junior, my newest partners in crime. I knew I was running out of time.
The drone of the turbocharged motor driven propellers was becoming slightly irregular. The annoying sound was an uncomfortable reminder that this pirated thoroughbred of an airplane was still fighting me en route to its new vocation, international smuggling. The arrhythmic beat, although not dangerous, was like the forced pounding of a boxers heart throbbing in the middle rounds as he resolves to final push toward a clean flawless run of finishing punches. I reached to the Cessna 402s dash and adjusted the propeller synchronization knobs until the motors sang together on the same powerful beating note.
For the last half an hour I had been at eight thousand feet as indicated on the altimeter, around 1,000 feet above ground level (AGL), with the new moon showing clearly the details of the Northern Utah high country.
The temperature inside the cabin had been acceptably uncomfortable as the heater was fighting near zero outside the aircraft. I could easily see the sage brush and pick out individual cattle grazing out in the open range in the stark moon light. The soft white glow of Salt Lake City was visible off to the South. Although I had been flying on and off for over eighteen hours straight since last sleeping, my senses were still crisp and sharp. I wish I could have said the same for my plane.
This theft had not gone exactly as planned. Flying an airplane, under the best of conditions, has its intense moments, like taking off, avoiding other air traffic and landing. These points of extreme focus are separated by mundane activities like looking for other traffic, scanning the gauges and calculating course corrections. This trip had been a shitstorm of adversity with little time for the usual flight maintenance and reflection.
I was already missing my girl Rhonda, whose help I depended upon to steal this Cessna 402. Up to this moment the adventure was born of fits and starts. My mind was working likewise scanning forward to my future work as a pilot for the Cartel and back through the last several weeks activities that had led to this opportunity. I slipped the Stones into the cassette player and let Girl with the far away eyes sing into my headphones.
Now 10:30 PM, I was airborne nearly a thousand air miles and nearly 24 hours from this planes theft, on my own, and headed for future base of operations in Virginia. Recent events had been continually creeping into my thoughts. I must have lost some of my focus because; here now over the Utah Mountains, I hadnt noticed how quickly the range of visibility was closing in on me. Still, I was not alarmed sufficiently to make a navigational adjustment and drifted off again with my thoughts. The gods must have still been angry over the rude acquisition of this fine bird.
I quickly snapped out of my reverie. Looking out of the windscreen, black and gray had replaced what was left of visibility. What the ****? I muttered out loud. From what a few moments earlier had been relatively clear air was now rapidly becoming a dangerous situation. I had seen the gathering of tall white cumulus cloud formations to the south but figured I would just weave my way through them towards my next scheduled stop in Loveland, Colorado. In the darkness I hadnt seen what was closing in fast behind me.
Then it happened
Without so much as the slightest of warnings I felt a massive motion towards my left and in the violence of the moment I could briefly see the altimeter spinning like a crazy clock displaying my acceleration in altitude. The powerful updraft of the unseen thunderhead behind me was sucking my plane like a bubble in a drinking straw. The blood was rushing from my brain. I must have blacked out for a few seconds. It did not matter. In a micro burst of wind shear so violent the airplanes control surfaces were useless. Like a drunk in a car crash I was probably lucky to be summarily disconnected from control. If I had been able to fight this assault I and my plane would have been lost.
Coming back to consciousness, all I could do was just hold on tight to the yoke and try to make some sense of this wild ride towards the moon. Apparently the deities were just joking because I was released from my vertical trajectory almost as quickly as it had devoured me and the plane. I was summarily spat out of this thunderhead at approximately 28,000 feet and upside down. My plane and I had been lifted over 20,000 feet, to an altitude well above breathable air. The whole wild ride happened in less than 20 seconds!
Now came the real test, a test far more critical than my ability to find and steal an aircraft. Could I get us out of this predicament and live to tell the tale? Think fast. Be sure. Act now. My ears were painfully popping and breathing was quickly becoming impossible. With a steady hand on the yoke and quick adjustments to the engine speed and control surfaces I righted the twin Cessna.
The plane had oxygen which I had not tested. I quickly felt for and turned the lever on the valve, slid the plastic mask over my nose and was relieved to breathe in the clean life supporting taste of cool pure oxygen.
I dont want to complain but things werent exactly going as well as planned at this point. I nosed the bird over and dove for the mountain tops beneath me. As I sought out a patch of clear air at 12,000 feet to regroup in, I wondered out loud What ******* else can go wrong. Checking my instruments for a navigational correction, I discovered that my wild little unscheduled ride up the elevator had sucked me more than ten miles north of my previous position. Snow was blowing all around me and lightning was leapfrogging horizontally across the nearby cloud tops.
I had seen enough violent weather for a lifetime in the last few minutes. It was time to set this bird down, check for damage and evaluate my chances of completing this stolen journey.
I dug into my flight bag and grasped the familiar little plastic bound book. Flipping on the red cabin night light I quickly thumbed to the Wyoming section. It appeared, in my Western Flight and Airport Frequency Guide, that the closest usable runway would be Rock Springs, Wyoming at around 7,600 feet above mean sea level. I made a desperate dash for this high plateau refuge. It wasnt long before I was in the airports radio range.
Again I had to do some quick thinking. I took a chance that it was snowing hard in Rock Springs and gave a false aircraft number identity contacting the airport. At least for a short time the foul weather was going to be an advantage.
The tower informed me of a couple of inches of snow on the landing surface with small blowing drifts. They advised I try to find a different place to land. I replied I was low on fuel and would take my chances. They resisted but I insisted. Seeing my landing lights approach they were good enough to turn on the runway lights. With a crosswind of twenty knots the runway was obscured in a shallow sea of white tumbling flakes flowing from left to right. I stuck the wheels hard, a strain on the gear, and landed relatively safely in white out conditions. Fortunately the taxiways were well identified with bright blue markers.
I taxied carefully and slowly off of the frozen blizzard obscured runway towards a couple of planes tied down near the end of the tarmac. Passing them I spun around 180 and pulled my bird into the line. I couldnt see the tower through the heavy blowing snow which meant that they couldnt read my numbers. I shut down the planes motors and exhaled. It seemed my first completely safe breath in what had felt more like combat than cross country flying.
Reaching back, for the big blue nylon bag that secured my traveling wardrobe, I fished for and felt the familiar down parka. I used it rock climbing, for many years, weathering many Northern Cascade mountain storms and brought it along just in case. Pulling it over my tired and cold torso I felt its warmth like a good old trusted friend.
The faithful goose down did its magic against the icy air. I got out and slipped the prop covers on the propellers to prevent ice from sticking to them in the snowstorm. Too dark to do a proper inspection for storm damage, I returned to the plane to crawl into the down sleeping bag I had brought with me for just the possibility of cold weather and this occasion. I couldnt measure the temperature but I was sure it was below zero.
