Flyover Country Ch. 03

Heading southwest from—well, from wherever we were—was much, much better than heading east into the frozen waste of northern Canada—but it still didn't get us to a nice room in a Fairbanks hotel anytime soon. Even with the throttle set way back, we were going to run out of fuel relatively soon, which meant I needed to set this old DeHavilland down somewhere, preferably before the engine quit. I much preferred controlled landings as opposed to crashes.

I snapped my microphone boom back into position. "Sharon?" I said to get her attention.

"Yes?" she responded instantly, looking at me from my right side. I glanced at her. Her eyes were level and not panicked.

"Can you take what I say for the next little bit and relay it to the folks back there, 'stead of me turning my head around and not paying attention to flying?" I asked.

"Certainly," she replied briskly. "Go ahead..."

"Okay ... tell them we're going to be running out of fuel in another hour or so ... make sure they understand it's not right now ... we've got a little time. Then, ask everyone to start looking out the windows—what we're looking for is a nice paved runway ... but I don't think we're going to find any. So, failing that, look for a lake ... somewhere with reasonably still water that I can put this bird down on, okay, honey?"

She didn't answer immediately. I belatedly realized I'd phrased that a little affectionately. I guessed she hadn't really cared for me doing that. Crap! I'd probably overstepped a boundary.

"OKAY...," she yelled into the back of the plane, "MATT SAYS WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH FUEL TO GET WHERE WE'RE GOING, SO EVERYBODY NEEDS TO LOOK FOR SOMEWHERE TO LAND ... EITHER ON SOME PAVEMENT OR ON A LAKE SOMEWHERE. ALL A' YOU GUYS BE LOOKING FOR A GOOD PLACE, OKAY?"

It was a reasonable interpretation of what I'd said, and quite possibly delivered in language they'd understand better. I reached out and caught her hand; she was reaching too. We held hands for a long moment. In spite of everything bad happening, touching her gave me a warm feeling.

* * *

The engine droned on powerfully, never faltering. It had dragged us some distance to the southwest, but I didn't know how far. An hour after we discovered we were in trouble, I was beginning to worry even more. Concern about where we were, began to take a backseat to a dread we were going to run out of fuel—and very quickly too.

I'd been doing a series of rough guestimates, judging how long we'd been flying on a faulty course, what our fuel consumption was, and a bunch of other things, mostly unknowns. The gauge said the fuel was awfully, awfully low, but who knew if it was accurate? It could be failing along with the other instruments.

What I came up with was a conclusion that we were absolutely going to go down before too much longer; the only question was whether we were going to go down hard, or relatively softly. I throttled back a little more, accepting a lower speed to save fuel. We began descending in a shallow glide.

* * *

"THERE ... OVER THERE!" someone, a guy, yelled at the top of his lungs. I heard him easily over the engine noise, but I didn't know who it was.

"Where is THERE? What direction?" I snapped. Sharon relayed my questions to the passenger cabin where someone was sounding the alert.

"Left," she told me, "...little bit behind us ... ahhh ... like at seven o'clock? ... know what I mean?"

"Gotcha!" I replied. "Good way to say it!" It was, and it showed she was keeping her head. A woman to walk with a man, not behind him. I was very glad Sharon Kincaid was there with me.

I took the old Otter in a wide-sweeping left bank; I was loathe to maneuver too radically, considering the low speed at which we were flying. A small body of water came slowly into view as we turned, steadying up directly in front of us. It was seven or eight miles off the nose of the aircraft, but hadn't been in view before; a range of mountains had hidden it until we reached where we were.

"Thank whoever it was spotted it ... really good job of staying alert!" I told Sharon. She relayed the thanks and the compliment.

We flew over the lake; I had to advance the throttle and make a hard turn to the right to avoid flying too close to a mountain that had hidden the water from us before, then I throttled back again and did a slow flyby.

It looked good, damned good. A highland lake, pristine from this height, surrounded by a forest of pines, or maybe firs—hell, I didn't know what they were—but it was a virgin forest around a beautiful little lozenge-shaped lake. I couldn't see any sort of underwater objects in the crystal clear water. That was a really good sign—nothing to rip out the undersides of the floats when they touched the water! I made my decision quickly. It was the way I did things.

"Okay, Sharon ... tell them we're going to set down on that lake down there ... everybody needs to pull their seatbelts tight and brace themselves, okay?" I could see her nodding from the corner of my right eye.

"OKAY, EVERYBODY," she yelled over the engine noise. "THE CAPTAIN HAS TURNED ON THE FASTEN SEATBELT SIGN ... PLEASE RETURN YOUR SEATS TO THE FULL UPRIGHT POSITION AND MAKE SURE YOUR SEATBELT IS SECURELY FASTENED. WE'RE GOING TO LAND RIGHT DOWN THERE! HANG ON TIGHT, KIDDOS ... GONNA BE A WILD RIDE!"

I couldn't help but grin in spite of everything. Sharon was one hell of a woman, and I loved being around her—even in a plane that wasn't going to be flying much longer. I shot her a quick glance, still smiling and took a second to pat her hand affectionately. She captured my hand and kissed the back of it, then released it quickly so I could put it back on the throttle.

I revved the engine and made another steep bank, coming out of it aligned with the long axis of the lake. I slapped the flaps down to fifteen percent, leveling out high enough to clear the tree tops but not much more. I was about thirty-five feet over the thick forest.

I reduced the throttle way back and let the plane drop, dropped the flaps to 40% and pulled back on the yoke to rub off a little more speed. I lowered the nose again as we passed over the last of the tall trees. The glide path was pretty darn good; we passed over the shoreline at about twenty feet and we were settling fast. I flared, lifting the nose one last time, just enough to raise the front edges of the floats, and chopped the throttle.

We kissed the water almost gently, then with greater force as the weight of the plane forced the floats deeper. Reaching down to the floorboard beside me, I engaged the rudders on the back of the floats and abruptly, we were in a DeHavilland boat instead of a plane. I think it was the best water landing I ever made.

We slowed rapidly. I looked around as well as I could outside my left-side window and forward, but I couldn't see anything that hinted we were in any immediate danger. When I asked Sharon to look out her side, she couldn't see any problems either.

There was a lot of cheering and high-fiving going on behind me and Sharon twisted around in her seat to take a bunch of high fives herself. She passed them on to me. We were all ecstatic to be down and safe. We weren't going to crash now, assuming I missed the random floating tree trunks here and there.

I let the engine rumble in idle, deliberately slowing our taxiing speed so I could better see what was around us. Finally, I found a little inlet off to my left. It led to what looked like a pebbly beach about half-way up the cove. Moving slowly, we taxied up the comparatively narrow waterway and a few seconds later, the front of the floats ground noisily a few inches up a mostly gravel slope—we were at rest.

I turned off the ignition, turned in my seat to grab Sharon in my arms. I kissed her soundly. She returned the kiss enthusiastically, so I kissed her again, more slowly and deliberately. She returned that too.

* * *

I reluctantly stopped kissing Sharon. I didn't want to stop, but there were things that needed doing. Opening my cockpit door, I stepped down on the left float and retrieved a short braided nylon rope with an anchor attached out of a storage bin in the float. I clipped the line to one of the landing gear supports, and walked up to the front of the float, avoiding the super-hot engine exhaust pipes.

From there, it was a short drop onto the gravely shore. The pebbles were damp—probably the floats had pushed a little wave a short distance up the slope—but the ground was dry a couple of yards inland. Pulling the rope taut, I slammed one of flukes down into the pebbly soil, and stepped on the shank, driving it a little deeper. The old DeHavilland was secure enough for now; we'd do a more permanent job later.

Looking back, I saw the passenger entry hatch was open and a guy was easing himself down onto the left float. "Yeah ... hey!" I called, "Ya'll come on out and get on dry land. Do everything you can not to get your footwear wet, though..."

* * *

In twenty minutes, all nine passengers were on dry land with me and trying to massage or walk the cramps out of their legs. They'd brought their tiny amounts of carry-on belongings out with them. We'd pull their luggage out of that compartment in a little while. While everyone else was dealing with tight muscles and working the kinks out of their backs, I climbed back up and hauled myself up on the wing with a dry stick in my hands. I opened the refuel valve and stuck the stick inside the fuel cell. I sighed to myself, closed the cover and made my way down off the wing and onto the left-side pontoon. The aviation fuel had barely wet the end of the stick.

"OKAY...!" I yelled, just to get everybody's attention. It probably wasn't necessary—they'd been watching me anyway.

"Okay ... are any of y'all ex Navy SEALs...?" It got a light chuckle from a couple of the men. "...Army Rangers? Marine Recon?" There were a few half grins as they saw what I was doing.

"Anyone have an uncle by the name of MacGyver?" Not even a snicker for that lame attempt at humor. I shrugged. Tough crowd!

"All right, then ... let's get some things out of the way." I looked them over, trying to make eye contact with each person.

"The bad news is that my instruments failed, but I don't know when they failed. That means I don't have any idea where we are, or in what direction the nearest bit of civilization lies. The batteries in the plane are at 100%, but the radio is also shot and I can't fix it. Are any of you electronic wizards, by any chance...?" No one raised a hand. "Okay ... anyone have a satellite phone?"

Nope! Nothing was going to be easy.

"Okay ... that's the bad news. The good news is that we are still very much alive and not one of us even has a scratch.

"Second, all bush planes have a survival kit in their tail compartment ... and I made sure I have all the standard gear, plus some extras that will make things a lot easier for us," I told them.

"We've got flares, a little bit of freeze-dried food, and some survival gear—like snares for small game, and gill nets for fishing. And ... I always carry a .357 revolver out here. I've got a rifle too. So we can live off the land and get along pretty darn well all by ourselves while we wait for the rescue teams to find us."

Everyone mulled that over for a moment. I didn't tell them the chance of a rescue team finding us were somewhere between nada and nil. The hours of flying over featureless arctic landscape, and seeing nothing but the same kind of desolate country in front of us after I'd made the course correction told me we were well off track.

Anyone searching for us would begin by looking along our projected route and a certain distance either side of that line. They'd have to move slow. Hunting for a tiny human being, or even something the size of the aircraft, from any altitude or moving at speed made it virtually impossible to see anything.

I was pretty sure we were truly lost—as in, off the edge of the map, lost. I was going to let them acclimate themselves to the wilderness for a couple of days, then introduce them to the idea we'd have to walk out and save ourselves.

* * *

We kept busy. Setting two anchor lines, emptying the aircraft of anything useful, and scouting around took up most of the afternoon. Evening was on top of us before we knew it. One of the guys had explored some of the forest surrounding our little inlet and found a nice little clearing about fifty yards inland where we could set up housekeeping for as long as we stayed here. We left the old Otter sitting where it was. It would be fine.

At our new campsite, there was a small, slow-flowing spring within walking distance and it had a basin filled with bone-chillingly cold water. In a little hollow downhill from the camp, we established our bathroom—some holes dug in the ground. I sent everyone except Sharon out looking for downed branches and limbs for firewood. Sharon and I spent our time cleaning a section of forest floor until it was free of dried pine needles and other vegetation. Then we carried rocks up from the lake shore to build a secure fire pit.

In my survival gear, I had a steel and flint fire starter, plus a blister pack of six plastic cigarette lighters in various colors and a two-pack of slightly larger lighters with a camouflage motif on the outside. I broke open the blister packs and passed the lighters out, cautioning those who took one to keep them in some deep, zipped-up pocket because being able to start a fire on demand would give us a tremendous advantage out here. I used the camouflage-pattern lighter I kept for myself to start our first fire. We had two, fairly small, collapsible, aluminum pots for boiling water and enough freeze-dried meals to last several days.

When the sun set, it got really, really dark. There were no street lights, no glow of a city just over the horizon, no nothing. We were clearly a gazillion miles from anywhere. The fire helped, though. It pushed the darkness back, leaving us a nice, cozy circle of light. We gathered around it to socialize and connect with our fellow survivors, which is what we were slowly becoming. We weren't travelers in an aircraft any longer. We were people working together to stay alive.

I started it off. "Okay ... if y'all don't mind, I think we should kind of introduce ourselves to each other and tell us a little bit about yourselves. I only know you as just random names on the passenger manifest, and you know me only as that weird pilot guy wearing a cowboy hat." I grinned, doffing my Stetson. "So let me start off.

"I'm Matthew Singletary, call me Matt, if you would, please. I'm a Texan, born and raised. I've been flying since I was a young teenager—my uncle taught me to fly—and I came to Alaska specifically for the light planes that fly the bush. I was a businessman in a previous life—before coming to Alaska—but I left it behind and haven't missed it a darn bit."

I pointed to one of them randomly.

"Hi, I'm Parker Anderson," he said quietly, "I'm a Baptist minister in Omaha, Nebraska," he continued, then stopped as if that was all there was to be said. I guess it was, actually.

"And I'm Michelle Anderson," the short brunette with the attractive, composed features sitting next to our minister explained. "I'm in charge of everything that goes on in Parker's ministry except the sermons!"

That got a little chuckle. It was cute, and both Michelle and Parker grinned. It was apparently a joke the two of them shared.

The others introduced themselves:

April and Ryan Delaney were from Waycross, Georgia where Ryan had a small business catering to the logging industry down there. April worked as hostess in an upscale restaurant.

Lyle and Penny Martin were from Albuquerque, New Mexico. They both worked in the banking industry. They'd met at a bank where Penny was a cashier and Lyle was a loan officer.

Spencer and Wendy Carlyle jointly owned a successful river-rafting business in Colorado.

"I'm Sharon Kincaid," she announced when it was her turn, "...and I live in Anchorage. I only do work for charities here and there," she avowed. "People say I'm the 'Ice Bitch Princess,' but I'm really not ... I'm just real picky who I choose to spend time with." She looked all around the circle. "I think I'm gonna like everyone here ... no stupes at all!" She said it with a grin, but there wasn't much amusement in her eyes. She said a few more things, then fell silent.

I looked around the circle, then glanced up at the sky. The stars were out, tiny diamonds shining in the inky blackness. "Okay, let's figure out which way is North...," I said musingly. "There's the Big Dipper ... there's the little one ... and that star right there at the end of the handle is ... the North Star. We need to mark—"

Sharon was in the process of dragging up a long, reasonably straight branch which she laid down near the campfire. I used a shorter stick to plow out smaller lengths of gouged earth at right angles to the branch, marking east and west. In the morning, we'd know, vaguely, in what direction salvation lay, or should.

* * *

After we talked for a while, I gathered a bunch of small branches into a nice pile in preparation to spreading my sleeping bag. Sharon came sauntering back into the fire-lit circle and stood watching me where I'd set my gear up, a couple of yards away from her tent. I had a sleeping bag rated for sub-arctic conditions in my survival kit, but didn't have a tent. Everyone else—every couple, plus Sharon—had sleeping bags and a lightweight tent from their expedition out to watch the caribou herds. The lack of a tent didn't concern me much. The tall trees around us would dilute any rain that fell overnight.

"What're you doing?" Sharon asked me in a slightly amused tone.

"Oh ... well, the branches and leaves will keep me off the ground and they'll be a little softer than bare earth, too," I said.

"I know that...!" Sharon replied testily. "I have some under my sleeping bag too," she told me, "which is inside a tent!" she finished. "Don't be an idiot, get in the tent where you'll be dry and be able to get some sleep..."

"Oh, I'll be fine," I remarked, "the trees will block most of any rain we get and—"

"There won't be ANY rain inside my tent," Sharon replied smoothly.

Her face was animated and even in the faint firelight, I could see she was flushed. Her eyes were wide as she dealt with one of the "stupes" she'd implied earlier she didn't like. With her soft hair blowing in the gentle breeze that'd come up, she was a vision come to life.

"Yes, dear," I replied with a grin.

She snorted softly, but it didn't sound too derisive, and there was a half-grin on her lips.

I gathered up my sleeping bag, walked to her tent and thrust it inside. It was going to be a tight fit in there, but we'd manage. I sat on a fallen tree limb to pull off my boots. Sharon already had her boots off and she crawled inside. As I started through the opening, my sleeping bag came flying out.

"Hey!" I said. It wasn't that intelligent of a thing to say, but it was all I could come up with.

"Don't need it!" Sharon replied briskly. "We'll be warmer sharing body heat!" she said in a no-nonsense tone.

What she said was very true, except that it wasn't going to be cold enough in early May Alaska for sharing body heat to be a critical issue.

"And there's no room to put your sleeping bag in here," she added.

Peeping inside, I saw that was also true and irrefutable. "Yes, dear...," I muttered again.

"I heard that!" she quipped.

"I know," I murmured resignedly, but I was smiling, and so was she.

I crawled in to find her double-size sleeping bag covering the whole floor of the tent. I blinked. She was holding out the pants and top she'd worn all day.

"Would you please hang these on a branch or something, please?" she asked politely, not even cracking a smile at my rather obvious amazement. I had to winch my jaw back up.