Flying Blind Read online

  Richard turned to me, “So you be tired and discouraged mon. I know what you feel. When I lived in Jamaica, me father and me picked bananas and pineapples for Dole fruit. When da fruit be ripe, we go to the fields, and we pick all day an all night. Sometimes we work sixteen hours straight in da fields wit the bugs and da snakes. Da boss he weigh the baskets, and we be paid by the pound, and sometimes he cheats on the scales. Do you tink we get discouraged Mon? We be discouraged, but we keep working because we have to — for da family. But we did get tired sometimes. And for dis we hab a solution.”

  Richard stopped talking and pulled out a knife. It was long and skinny. When he pressed a button, a thin blade popped out and glistened in the alley’s half-light. I moved as far away as I could and grabbed my computer case to use as a shield.

  Was he going to kill me?

  “Not to worry, me friend. I won’t kill you, not today,” he said with a chuckle. Then he removed a small mirror and a glassine envelope of powder from his fanny pack. He used the blade to move a small portion of the powder onto the mirror and then arranged the powder into two rows. “Dis here be cocaine. It will clear your mind, mon.”

  My fear gradually morphed into curiosity. My only experience with illegal drugs was the time when Beth and I went to Jamaica for our honeymoon. We enjoyed the island “vibe” that included the rum cocktails, reggae music, roast goat and the omnipresent smell of marijuana. On our first night there, I gave our waiter a ten-dollar bill and asked if he could get us some “ganja.” A few hours later he came to our room with a shopping bag full of the stuff.

  That bag kept us very high and happy for the rest of the week. Sara, our older daughter, arrived precisely nine months after our trip. Soon after that, the pressures of family and career got in the way of that kind of reckless behavior.

  Richard rolled one of my hundred-dollar bills into a tube. He focused the tube on the left-hand line and inhaled. When he finished, he shook his body like a dog coming out of a lake.

  “Now you. Just inhale like you be smelling a flower.” I spent about two seconds making my decision. At first, I wasn’t going to do it. Then I reconsidered.

  What the hell? Richard was forcing me to do something I always wanted to do. I inhaled.

  The effect was amazing. The confusion, depression, and tiredness disappeared. I closed my eyes for a few seconds. When I opened them, Richard was smiling. “You feel better, mon?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  The analytical part of my mind knew that once we were at the airport, there would be a thousand ways I could escape my captor. But now I didn’t care. Was it the cocaine or my enthusiasm for the adventure?

  Fuck the credit cards, fuck Brenda and her budget. I’m doing this!

  As Richard backed out of the alley, the right side of the car scraped the wall removing a good deal of the paint and the Cadillac’s passenger side mirror. Richard didn’t seem to notice or care.

  My nose had turned numb. Then I remembered my wife. I wanted her to know how good it felt.

  Maybe Beth and I should try cocaine. What would it feel like to have sex while high on cocaine?

  “Let me have my cell phone,” I demanded, “I need to call my wife.”

  She didn’t answer, and I had to leave a message. “Hi, Beth it’s me. Class went well. I’m going out to dinner with a new business associate, so I’ll have to turn off my phone. I’ll talk to you in the morning. Hope all is well.”

  I pressed the end button. “Very good, mon,” Richard shouted as we turned onto the highway. “We fly.”

  Chapter 5

  Airborne

  “You must always follow a written checklist,” my flight instructor said the first time that we got into an airplane. He repeated it again and again until it became a mantra that I scrupulously followed while I was learning to fly. After earning my wings, I continued to follow his instructions each and every time I flew. But the cocaine flowing through my veins convinced me the checklist was unimportant. There was no need to check a sample of fuel for contaminants because my enhanced sense of smell told me the fuel was just fine. It wasn’t necessary to check each of the navigation lights, I simply put my hands on a wing and my old friends the red, green, and white light bulbs told me they were ready to illuminate as soon as I flipped the switch.

  Ignoring the checklist was foolhardy. Flying under the influence was illegal. A small part of my brain knew this, but that part was aggressively suppressed by the rest of my psyche.

  With Richard and his black duffle safely on board, I pressed the radio button and asked for weather and radio checks. The sole employee on duty that afternoon, replied, “We read you loud and clear, Mr. Goldberg. The wind is from the west at five miles an hour. There’s a cold front coming that will probably bring a thunderstorm, but it won’t be here until ten or eleven. Will you be returning to the airport later?”

  “Yes, this is just a local flight.”

  “Okay, have a nice flight.”

  I taxied to the end of the runway and obtained clearance to fly the narrow corridor between Washington and Baltimore on my way east to New Jersey. I brought the engine up to full power, released the brakes, keeping the nose pointed at the runway’s center line. The irony wasn’t lost on Richard, who said, “Hey mon, we’re doing another line.” We were airborne before I could think of a snappy retort.

  Flying the corridor requires concentration because of the three large airports, many small ones, and the numerous “no-fly” zones such as the White House and Capitol. Normally it is a white-knuckle experience. That Tuesday with my drug-enhanced awareness, I felt relaxed, confident, even arrogant. All the important landmarks stood out against the urban landscape as if some giant hand had inserted labels next to them. I was able to see the other planes before Air Traffic Control (ATC) advised me of their presence. I was certain that I was heading in the right direction at the best altitude. I was in the zone, flying intuitively.

  Richard said nothing. We had reversed roles. Now I was in control. “Do you have any questions?” I asked as an American Airlines jet, crammed with several hundred souls, passed over our heads with a thousand feet to spare. Before he could respond, we were buffeted by the jet’s wake. The plane rocked forward and back. The view through the windshield changed from land to sky. It only lasted a few seconds. I was ready for it and just held the controls steady. Richard wasn’t. I watched with a perverse joy as Richard’s smile disappeared and was replaced by a grimace of terror.

  After the turbulence passed and he had enough breath to talk, he pointed to the aviation chart in my lap and asked, “What’s that?”

  “It’s a special map that pilots use. It shows all the airports, restricted areas, cell phone towers, and major landmarks.”

  “Do it show all the airports? What about the private airports on people’s land?”

  “Yes, it shows those too.”

  Richard entered a number into his cell phone. He spoke for a while then asked, “Daniel, you know about latlon numbers?” He had to repeat this twice until I understood that he meant latitude and longitude.

  “Yes, of course, what about them?” Was he trying to teach me geography?

  Richard wrote two numbers and the word “Waterford” in the white space on the edge of my chart.

  “I need you to take me to dis airport. It be a private field, no problem. You just drop me off dere.”

  I put the plane on autopilot and found the town of Waterford, New Jersey. Sure enough, there was the indication of a private airfield with a grass runway. I hated grass runways. They often had bumps and ruts that could damage my precious plane. I heard stories of pilots hitting deer while landing, with disastrous results to all parties.

  “I don’t know, Richard,” I said. “Why don’t I take you to Berlin as we agreed? It has a nice, long, paved runway. Landing on grass can damage my plane.”

  Without missing a beat, Richard reached into his pouch and pulled out ten more hundred dollar bills. “Daniel, me plans
be changed,” he demanded while waving the bills at me.

  The extra thousand would make a welcome dent in my family’s debts. But I sensed a note of urgency in Richard’s voice and remembered my terror behind the shopping mall. “Fuck you, Richard. I don’t care how much money you have in there. Let’s just forget about this trip. I’m turning back to Gaithersburg.” I rocked my wings slightly as if I was getting ready to make a U-turn.

  “No, don’t do it!” Richard shouted. “Here be another thousand. I need to be at dat airport. It’s getting late.”

  The extra money would bring the trip’s total to three thousand dollars, about the same amount of my last government check. “Ok,” I said, proud that I was able to get the better of the Jamaican. “I’ll try to land there. But if I can’t, we’re going to Berlin.”

  That was a lie. I knew we were going to land at Waterford no matter what. At that moment, I felt I could do anything. The engine pulling us through the air was tuned to my heartbeat. The vibrations under my seat were linked to my nervous system. I could feel my fingers extending through the yoke, into the wings all the way to the ailerons where the wind flowing over my aluminum skin held the plane aloft. The airplane and I were a single living entity flying at 5500 feet. I never felt anything like this before. If we were not in controlled airspace, I would have tried to do a flip.

  We passed out of the Baltimore controlled airspace and continued eastward into New Jersey. Soon we were over the Pine Barrens and out of flight controllers’ domains. We were flying over acres of trees only occasionally interrupted by a road. In the distance, we could see the late afternoon sunlight reflecting off of the Atlantic City casino towers. Otherwise, the landscape was unmarred by human habitation.

  The distance to the airport as displayed on the GPS’s small screen steadily declined. When it was down to single digits, we spotted a large rectangle cut out of the trees and framed by a dirt road at one end, and steel electric transmission towers at the other. I reduced altitude to 1200 feet and flew over the towers shuddering to think what would happen if we caught a wheel in one of the cables.

  Richard, the ever-helpful co-pilot, contributed, “Hey mon, you need to watch out for dem cables. Dey looks real close.”

  “Don’t worry. We’re at least 400 feet higher. Can you see your friend? Are you sure this is the right place?”

  Richard made the call as I crossed the middle of the runway. “Henry, you dere?” After a pause, “Henry say he seeing your plane. He says the runway is all right, nice and smooth. He on it now.”

  Just then, I saw a man waving his arms. I turned left and flew parallel to the runway. I could see a tractor with its mowing attachment parked at one end. I continued two miles past the field and then turned left twice reducing power after each turn. We were on final approach and ready to land. I stayed at 1,000 feet, and as soon as the power lines were behind us, I cut the engine back to idle. We needed to lose altitude quickly. I turned my ailerons sharply to the left while depressing the right rudder pedal to the floor. The maneuver destroyed the plane’s lift, and we dropped like a stone.

  “Who-ee,” said Richard straining against the shoulder straps, “Watch out! We’re going to crash!”

  Just a taste of what you put me through. We hit the ground with the nose wheel in the middle of the runway and bounced back into the air. The end of the runway was just ahead, and I realized that I wouldn’t be able to stop in time, so I added full power and brought the nose up intending to go around and try again. Too high. The stall-warning horn sounded, a blaring high-pitched monotone, and we began to fall despite the roaring engine.

  I lowered the nose. The horn stopped but the trees were coming fast, so I raised the flaps. The reduced drag created additional speed, which, in turn, translated into the additional lift. Several trees to the right weren’t as high as the others, so I turned to the gap and climbed out of the hole in the forest.

  My passenger sat very straight and still. “Hey, mon, you know how to fly dis ting?” he said in a soft voice.

  “Yo, my man, your turn. You go land dere.” Then I let go of the yoke. The plane veered to the right and started to fall.

  Richard recoiled from the yoke as if it were a snake. “Holy shit mon, I’m sorry. You fly just fine.”

  I kept my hands on my lap as the plane started a lazy death spiral. Richard grabbed the yoke and pulled it to his chest which made the plane stall and triggered the horn again. I waited until I could see the sweat beading his forehead. Then he started to scream. “Daniel, please. We going to crash!”

  We were 50 feet over the trees when I finally grabbed the yoke. We continued to circle, but this time, we were going up, not down. I wasn’t done with my flying companion. “Richard, are you sure you wouldn’t like to land?”

  “No mon, you just fly it da way you do. I’ll jus’ sit.”

  Grinning maniacally, I maneuvered the plane past the field to line up for a second try. This time, we cleared the power lines by less than 100 feet. I could see a man, presumably Henry, sitting on a small motorcycle at the beginning of the runway.

  Full flaps down, I cut the power, crossed the controls, and brought us down to 50 feet above the grass. But the plane was flying sideways. If the wheels touched the ground, we would crash. At the last possible moment, I uncrossed the controls and got the nose pointed in the right direction.

  Seconds before the wheels touched the ground, a flock of pheasants flew directly in front of us. The wildfowl and my propeller merged. A puree of blood and feathers covered most of my windshield.

  “Watch out, Daniel, more coming!”

  I couldn’t see them. Pieces of dead fowl obliterated my forward vision. We heard three thumps as three more cousins joined the avian suicide pact. There was nothing I could do about it. I didn’t panic. If we stayed in the center of the runway, we’d be able to stop before hitting the trees.

  Then I heard a crunching sound and the plane veered sharply to the left. A glance out my left-side window showed blood and feathers surrounding the left wheel cowling. The left wheel’s brake mechanism was jammed. I pressed down on the right brake pedal to compensate, but the tires just skidded to the left on the grass.

  I still didn’t panic. Once we leave the mowed portion, the high grass will stop us.

  “Christ Daniel, can’t you stop dis ting?” Richard yelled.

  I wasn’t going to answer him. I had just realized that we weren’t heading towards the benevolent high grass. We were skidding directly towards the parked tractor. That’s when I panicked. If we crashed into the tractor, the plane would never fly again.

  “Tighten your seat belt,” I yelled as the right wing got closer and closer.

  Finally, it was one of the runway ruts that saved us. My right wheel sank up to its axle. It became a pivot, swerving us away from destruction. We came to an ignoble stop with the left wing fifteen feet away from the tractor.

  I could tell by his ashen face that Richard had forgotten to breathe. He was clasping his duffle bag to his chest like a life preserver.

  Exhausted, I could feel pools of sweat on my back and in my armpits. When I turned off the engine, the quiet overwhelmed me. It was interrupted only by the chirps of the remaining pheasants.

  “Dey singing for dey dead folks,” Richard observed.

  “I think its applause for my great flying.”

  “Ya mon, you good. You real good.”

  If only my flight instructor could see me now.

  Chapter 6

  Plans Change

  Even before I opened the door, I knew we were in trouble. The mess on the windshield looked like I’d flown through a butcher shop, but that didn’t bother me. Some water and a little elbow grease would clean it up. The real problem was the left wheel. I knew it was jammed. If it was bent, or if I blew the tire, we would be stuck.

  The cowling over the wheel was a mess. It was dented and almost torn off its frame.

  “God damn it, Richard,” I yelled, “look what happ
ened!”

  Richard didn’t respond to my harangue. It seemed to take all his resources to get his feet to the ground. His face was ashen — a new look for the jolly Jamaican. His distress was my only solace for the damage.

  The motorcycle rider approached. He was young and like Richard, a Jamaican. Like his mentor, his hair was in dreadlocks.

  “Richard,” he said, “I thought for sure you were going to crash!”

  What about me, asshole. Did you think Richard was flying the plane?

  They embraced, and Richard said, “Henry, you must meet me good friend and first class pilot, Daniel. Daniel, dis be me friend and partner Henry.”

  I nodded in Henry’s general direction. I didn’t come to this God-forsaken pheasant sanctuary to make new acquaintances. While they talked, I removed the wheel cowling. It was damaged beyond repair. Thankfully, aside from being clogged with bird parts and grass, the brakes and tire were okay. I removed the mess transferring some of the blood and mud to my clothes.

  The three of us pushed the plane near the hangar, where I used a hose to wash the windshield. The two co-conspirators moved their business conference around the corner and out of earshot. As I worked, the breeze freshened. There was still plenty of sunlight since it was almost the longest day of the year. I was hot, hungry, and dirty — anxious to get back.

  “Okay, Richard, can we leave now?” I asked when the two returned. I assumed that Henry was the person that owed Richard money.

  “No, Daniel, Henry and me, we need to go see a man about da money. You fly by yourself to Atlantic City, and we meet you dere.” I was getting more and more annoyed.

  “What do you mean? Isn’t Henry the man who owes you the money?”

  Once again our roles reversed. I was now the student, and Professor Richard was teaching his course Introduction to Drug Dealing 101. “You see, Daniel, Henry he handles me business in New Jersey. We need to see a certain man together. We need to go right now.”

  Atlantic City International was less than thirty miles away. I could get there easily, but another takeoff and landing weren’t part of the deal.