Chapter Thirteen Is Here To Rock And Roll

Tuesday, June Fourteenth, Four Forty Five P.M.

Alex had started getting a bit nervous about the flight when Bruce had compared their airplane to a flying gas can they were going to be strapped into for twenty hours.

He’d gotten even more nervous after Bruce had finished his preflight inspection of the airplane and then handed Alex a weird looking vest.

“Put this on,” Bruce had said.

“OK.  What is it?” Alex said.

“Survival vest,” Bruce said.

“What do I need this for?” Alex said.

“In case you survive a water landing, obviously,” Bruce said.

Alex put the vest on without further questions.

Currently, they were in the airplane, and Bruce was doing something he called a “Run up.”  He’d pulled to one side of the taxiway after they’d nearly gotten to the runway, and was now running the engine hard with the brakes on, watching the gauges.  Bruce had already told Alex to stay quiet until they’d gotten to altitude, so Alex wasn’t sure what Bruce was checking.

For Alex’s part, he listened to the engine running, feeling the plane vibrating, trying to notice any sounds that seemed out of place.

He gave it up after a few seconds when he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to recognize the difference in sound between a perfectly running airplane and one that was about to crap out.

When Bruce seemed satisfied, he throttled down the engine, and then radioed the control tower.  Alex had tried to catch what was being said, but he wasn’t able to understand a single word of it.

Bruce released the brakes and they rolled back on to the taxiway.  They stopped again, just short of the runway.  Bruce and the control tower had another conversation Alex couldn’t follow, and then they stayed exactly where they were.

“We’re waiting for a Piper Cub to land,” Bruce said.  “We might be waiting a while, they’re slow.  You’ll be able to see them before long if you look off to your right.”

Alex looked out the right window, but all he could see when he tried to look up was the Cessna’s wing.

“Here they come,” Bruce said. 

A few seconds later, a bright yellow airplane slowly, slowly floated down out of the sky, and seemed to simply glide on to the runway.  Alex watched it go by, and then take the first turn off of the runway.

There was a bit of chatter on the radio then.  The only words Alex could make out were, “Take off. Good luck.”

Bruce answered the tower, and then said to Alex, “Hold on to your ass, it’s going to take us some serious effort to get off the ground with all the fuel we’re carrying.”

Alex felt less than reassured by Bruce’s announcement.

They turned on to the runway, and Bruce went to maximum throttle.  The Cessna’s engine roared, and they rolled gently forward.  Alex guessed they might be going almost ten miles per hour.  They gained speed gradually.  Alex would have described their acceleration as “glacial.”

Ordinarily, Alex didn’t get particularly excited about flying.  Certainly, he enjoyed the take offs and landings, but overall, flying was much less exciting that riding his bicycle in downtown Minneapolis.  Today, however, Alex’s nerves were all singing. 

Earlier, Bruce had told Alex that they were so overloaded with fuel that taking off was going to take some finesse, and a good helping of luck.  He’d said that if he had to, he would abort the takeoff rather than try to get off the ground if it was hopeless.

It seemed to Alex they were halfway down the runway, still slowly gaining speed.  Bruce was patting the dashboard, and Alex could hear him muttering, “Come on, girl,” through the intercom.

Alex found himself wishing the plane had an “Oh shit” handle for him to grab on to.  Instead, he just pressed his hands in to the top of his knees as hard as he could, and hoped that this experience was going to end without him and Bruce running around the airport in flames, having entirely forgotten to stop, drop, and roll in their panic.

The gauge that said “airspeed” was still slowly climbing.  It seemed to Alex that Bruce was even getting a bit nervous.

Alex had asked Bruce how he knew when the plane was going fast enough to take off, ordinarily.  Bruce had replied that the plane would start to feel light, like it wanted to take off.  To the seat of Alex’s pants, it seemed like their plan was still firmly attached to the ground.

He glanced over at Bruce, and noticed that Bruce’s jaw was firmly set.  Apart from that, it was impossible to read his expression, since Bruce was wearing a baseball cap and a large pair of aviator sunglasses.

There was no missing the lack of cocky self-assurance that usually clung to Bruce like drugstore aftershave the second he got into a plane, however.

Alex caught himself trying to will the plane to go faster.

It seemed as if they were getting really close to the end of the runway.

He noticed the plane shaking, just a bit.  He glanced over at Bruce and noticed the barest hint of a smile.  A couple of seconds later, Bruce pulled the control yoke back, and the airplane hauled itself off of the ground.

“Woo hoo!” Alex shouted, despite himself, as he watched the end of the runway pass under the plan mere seconds later.

“Shut up!” Bruce said.  Alex noticed Bruce was smiling openly, though.

Looking back out the window, Alex watched as the ground fell away beneath them.  About ten minutes later, Bruce and the control tower had another conversation that Alex couldn’t follow, and then Bruce said, “Get settled in, we’re going to be up here for a while.”

“How long is it going to take us to get to Walli-Wo?” Alex asked Bruce.

“Given the current conditions, I figure we’ll get there in about twenty hours,” Bruce said.

Eight and a half hours later, things were already getting pretty bad in the Cessna.  For one thing, just because a person is in an airplane doesn’t mean that they no longer need to attend to certain bodily needs.  And for another thing, single engine Cessna aircraft do not come equipped with bathroom facilities.

Which mean if he needed to go, Alex had to piss in a bottle.  Doing so had not proven itself to be an experience Alex would recommend to others.

Another issue was that Bruce had decided that tacos from Jack In The Box were just the thing to eat before getting into an airplane for twenty hours.  All of the available ventilation options were ventilating as hard as they could, but the cockpit of that plane was not a fun place to be at the moment.

Which leads into another thing Alex had never considered: flying over the ocean, after the first thirty minutes or so, is staggeringly boring.  There’s nothing to look at in any direction except blue-grey water below grey-blue sky.  Alex wished he’d brought a magazine or something.

Alex’s legs ached, and he found himself longing for the comfort of a coach class non-stop flight to Australia.

He and Bruce had chatted a bit, but at the moment they’d run out of things to talk about.  Alex was surprised, then, when Bruce started talking.  Alex couldn’t understand a word of what he’d said, except he caught the word “emergency.”

“What?” Alex said. 

Bruce held his hand up to silence Alex.  A moment later, the radio crackled to life and another voice said something else Alex couldn’t catch.  He was pretty sure he’d heard “Niner” in there.  Maybe.  Whatever they said, they didn’t seem very happy to hear from Bruce.

Bruce replied the moment the other person stopped talking, a whirl of numbers and letters and codewords that left Alex hopelessly boggled. 

“Thank you,” Bruce said, finally, and the radio conversation ended.

“What’s the emergency?” Alex said to Bruce.  He was doing his best to stay calm, but the thought of experiencing a flight emergency in the middle of the ocean made Alex more than a little nervous.  He couldn’t stand fish, and would prefer to simply not invite himself into their home.

Especially while dressed in a pink bunny suit.  He could just see the headlines, “Human remains washed ashore in bunny suit, authorities remain baffled.”

“Huh?” Bruce said.

“The emergency you just radioed somebody about.  What is it?” Alex said.

“Oh,” Bruce said.  “I told them we’re low on fuel and the engine is running rough.”

“What?” Alex said.  His heart had just leapt up his throat, and was now hugging his brain for comfort.

“Relax, Alex,” Bruce said. “We’ve got plenty of fuel and we’re running fine.”

“O.K.” Alex said.  “So, why did you radio about an emergency?”

“I’ve diverted our flight slightly so we can land on a little island with a military installation there.  Generally speaking, they wouldn’t be cool with us landing there, but if we declare an emergency, they’re kind of honor-bound to help out, right?” Bruce said.

“Yeah, but aren’t they going to be a little pissed when they realize we didn’t have an actual emergency?” Alex said.

“Nah,” Bruce said.  “I know the base commander.  We used to hit the strip clubs together back in the day.  But they’ve got to log our landing, and you know how the military can be about rules and regulations.  So, declaring an emergency lets their clerks do all the needed paperwork, and we get to land and stretch our legs.  Everybody wins.”

“OK,” Alex said.  “If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure,” Bruce said.  “You just wait, they’re going to be more than happy to see us.”

“OK, if you say so.  A stretch will be good, for sure,” Alex said.

About ten minutes later, Alex was able to see the island on the horizon.  Not much after that, he could see the runway, and very shortly after that they were on the ground.

Seconds after that, ten or fifteen jeeps full of soldiers had surrounded their plane on the runway.  All of them had guns aimed at Alex and Bruce.

“Uh, Bruce, I thought you said they were going to be happy to see us,” Alex said.