The Cannibal Queen

by Stephen Coonts

  Prop full forward, mixture up, throttle to the stop and left wing down smartly, 80 degrees angle-of-bank and pull hard to whip her around. Wings level and eastbound with heart pounding, I reset the engine controls for cruise.

  You wanted a peek, Coonts, and by God you got it.

  The saddle leading north across the ridges to Thompson Falls is still open, so I turn the Queen north.

  Over Thompson Falls Airport, a single 4,000-foot-long strip of asphalt, I look down the Clark’s Fork valley at a white haze. Time to find a phone, even if I have to walk to town.

  No answer on Unicom, but the wind sock tells me the wind is out of the west, as I suspected it would be. All these clouds are coming from that direction.

  Taxiing in I see a fuel truck and a man and two children standing beside it in front of a hangar several hundred feet east of the parking mat. As I kill the engine I look at my watch. It’s 10:30 A.M. and I have been flying for 1.4 hours.

  The man from the hangar comes walking over trailed by the children. His name is Jim Carstens. He’s in his sixties, wearing bib overalls and a small blue cap with a tiny bill, the kind that heavy equipment mechanics wear to keep grease out of their hair. The children are his grandchildren, visiting from Washington state for a few weeks.

  He compliments me on the condition of the plane, then adds, “Boy, we sure are getting some old ones this summer. Couple days ago two guys in an old Fairchild stopped here on their way to Oshkosh.”

  “A 1937 Fairchild?”

  “Think so. Wearing a Wright engine.”

  “Saw them at Sheridan, Wyoming, yesterday and heard about them in Bozeman. Small world.”

  After we fueled the plane and added a couple quarts of oil, I called Flight Service. “I don’t have a current observation for Sand Point, and no forecast. Coeur d’Alene is fifteen hundred overcast, rain showers about. No forecast for them either. You know, the weather wasn’t supposed to get this bad.”

  I knew. “Call you back in an hour or so. Maybe you’ll have a forecast then.”

  “Maybe.”

  I hung up the phone on the workbench of Carstens’ hangar and walked outside for a look. The wall of white was still there. Mr. Carstens offered to loan me his Jeep to go to town for lunch, and I accepted.

  As I parked in front of Granny’s Restaurant the rain began. And I had left the cockpit cover off the Queen.

  For some reason I developed a headache.

  After a hamburger I filled the Jeep with gas as the rain continued to fall, then drove the three miles back to the airport to get the cockpit cover installed. I finished that chore thirty seconds before the rain stopped. Thirty minutes later another shower came though, obscuring the valley to the west.

  Mr. Carstens, the kids, and I were having a pleasant visit outside when we heard an airplane. Automatically the chins rose and four pairs of eyes scanned the cloudy sky.

  There! A high-wing tail-dragger. It passed over Thompson Falls and continued westward down the valley into the opaque rain squall. It disappeared into the rain as Mr. Carstens shook his head and I made a flip comment about people without good sense, one I instantly regretted. Who just flew into Mullan Pass for a peek?

  The words were no more than out of my mouth when the plane popped back out of the rain. It passed overhead and set up for a left downwind approach. When it landed Mr. Carstens and the children walked over to greet the pilot and his passenger, a woman. As the little party came back to the hangar, another rain squall arrived.

  This couple were from a city in coastal Washington and were returning from the annual Cessna 180 fly-in this past weekend at Cody, Wyoming. Over 150 of these airplanes were there and many people camped out under their plane, they informed us, as they did.

  They were nice people and Mr. Carstens loaned them his Jeep for the jaunt to town for lunch.

  As the afternoon progressed and two more showers came and went, Mr. Carstens and I talked about flying. He learned to fly in 1958, he said, but soon dropped it when money got tight.

  “I tried farming and didn’t make it, tried trucking and didn’t make it, so I told my wife that if we weren’t going to make it, we might as well do something fun. So I bought this hangar and got a lease from the county and got into the FBO business. There never has been an FBO here, so I figured to give it a try. We aren’t in the books yet and most people are surprised when they find gas here, but the word will get around and things will pick up.”

  It’s painful to hear such optimism. You hope it’s true, you suspect it isn’t. If it were that easy someone would have tried to float an FBO here years ago.

  Carstens has plans—he was building a picnic table to put out front as I watched; he’s going to build a little office building beside the hangar. Then he wants to put up four tee-hangars that people have told him they would rent.

  He went back to work on the picnic table and I got out of his way. I examined every airplane on the line—all five—and watched the clouds roll in from the west.

  The children visited with me in turn. The girl likes to ride in her granddad’s Cessna 172, and she and her brother were going to visit for three weeks unless her grandmother tired of them sooner and sent them home. The boy’s favorite radio station in Washington was KORD, which plays all of his favorite songs, including his very favorite “All My Ex’s Live in Texas.” His granddad learned welding the hard way.

  “Which way is that?”

  “I don’t know. But I heard him tell someone yesterday that he learned it the hard way.”

  I was on the phone to Flight Service when the Cessna 180 couple returned from town. I shared what I had learned from the briefer with them—Sand Point weather was unknown, but Coeur d’Alene was 2,500 scattered. They decided to give it a try. I was dubious. All I could see down the valley to the northwest was clouds. I decided to wait awhile after they left and then go myself if they didn’t come back.

  This free ride on the courage of others may sound sneaky smart, but it has a rather large flaw. If the weather is so atrocious the recce pilot kills himself, the folks waiting to see if he made it will erroneously assume he did. Yet the Cessna pilot looked intelligent enough, reasonably sober, and he had made it here from Cody, Wyoming, without altering the appearance of his airplane. I thought he might have sense enough to turn around if he ran into an opaque wall of rain.

  I watched him go as I took the cockpit cover off the Queen and got her ready. The speck that was the Cessna moved over to the west wall of the valley and disappeared behind the cloud at a very low angle.

  Aha! Now I see. There is a little hill between me and that cloud and it really doesn’t reach the ground.

  I strapped in and cranked the Lycoming. In minutes I was airborne and could see that my revelation had been correct. But I was thankful the Cessna pilot had dropped into Thompson Falls. Having that other airplane on the ground made my waiting easier.

  An hour and ten minutes later I landed uneventfully in Coeur d’Alene.

  As I cross the great basin of western Washington the wind begins to blow from the northwest. At first the only indications are the dust plumes from the tractors plowing the wheat fields, then the noticeable crab, and at last the realization that my progress across the ground has become glacial. I have gained an hour by crossing into the Pacific Time Zone, so it is still only a few minutes before 6 P.M. when I cross over Moses Lake.

  The weather here in the basin is clear and the mountains to the west plainly visible. Also plainly visible are the tops of the clouds pushed up behind the mountains by the westerly wind and trickling through the passes.

  The Flight Service briefer I called from Coeur d’Alene said everything west of the Cascades was overcast and would stay that way for the next two days, so I am going to land in Ellensburg and call again. If the cloud deck is solid tomorrow, I’ll leave the plane, rent a car and meet Nancy and the kids at Whidbey tomorrow night. They’re returning to Whidbey Island for the first time in fifteen years. Spending the weekend w
ith them seems more important than getting the Queen to the airshow.

  Over Moses Lake I decide to land at Wenatchee instead of Ellensburg. If there are any cloud breaks over Puget Sound, I can hop the mountains from Wenatchee.

  The last ten miles of the flight take ten minutes as I descend into the teeth of a terrific headwind. I fly directly northwest up the Columbia River gorge with the runway at Wenatchee in plain sight dead ahead. But I can’t get there. This is life in painfully slow motion. Remember those dreams you had as a kid when you were racing for your life from some slobbering monster but you couldn’t run?

  The wind is at least twenty to twenty-five knots straight down the runway—the Cannibal Queen stops like they have glue on the asphalt. She touches down and is instantly taxiing. I have to add power to keep her rolling.

  “I’m flying a Stearman,” I told the briefer, “strictly VFR. I’m in Wenatchee and want to get to Whidbey Island. I can’t sneak through a pass and down a valley because the clouds are too bad. So I need to fly over the overcast and find a hole. I need a hole.”

  “I understand,” he said crisply. “I’ve been briefing this area for a lot of years and I know exactly what you’re up against. Let’s see. …” He played with his computer a bit, then said, “The San Juans have scattered clouds, clear above. Bellingham is broken and so is Navy Whidbey. Solid over Seattle.”

  So the clouds feathered out over Puget Sound. Hmmm. Could I count on this? “What’s the forecast?”

  “Going to stay scattered in the islands until dark. Supposed to be a low solid overcast west of the mountains tomorrow and Saturday, clearing Sunday. There’s a trough to the northwest driving this stuff down on us.”

  “And the winds at nine thousand feet?”

  “Northwest at twelve to fifteen.”

  After I thanked him I sat staring at the chart. I have fuel for two and a half hours of flying. I’ll be bucking a hell of a wind to get high enough to get over the Cascades and the clouds, yet if what the briefer said is accurate, the winds probably drop off once I get west of the divide. But what if I get over the sound and there is no hole?

  Well, unless I have the gas to go with the wind back to Wenatchee, my goose is well and truly fried. So say I fly northwest for an hour and a half, and if I don’t actually see indications that there is a hole over the sound, I turn around? An hour’s flying with this wind right on my tail should put me back in Wenatchee. What’s wrong with that plan?

  Well, the wind could die, then you would need an hour and a half to get back to Wenatchee. That’s three hours aloft, my slow child, and you’ll be burning fumes. Twelve gallons an hour times three is 36 gallons, plus the extra fuel burned in the taxi and climbout. Your plane holds 42. Maybe three gallons or so left after three hours of flying. If the wind dies completely, which is not very likely.

  I play with it and use my pencil on the chart to measure distances. I’ll give it a try.

  It’s 6:45 P.M. when I start the engine. At 8:15 I must fish or cut bait. If I keep going, the hole had better be there or I’ll be in big big trouble.

  Aided by this brisk warm wind the Cannibal Queen leaps off the runway. She climbs willingly enough above the city of Wenatchee. I level at 10,500 feet and check her progress over the ground by watching the topography slide under the leading edge of the left wing. Slow.

  And already I am cold. Not chilly—truly cold. I’m wearing an undershirt, a long-sleeved cotton shirt, two sweatshirts and a leather jacket, but I forgot to put on gloves. My hands are cold and the cold seeps around the collar of the jacket and my legs and feet chill. It couldn’t be more than forty degrees up here and the humidity gives the air a bite.

  I fly 290 degrees toward my first and last navigation checkpoint, Lake Wenatchee. I can see it dead ahead when I swing the nose a little left or right. Beyond the lake are the mountains and the cloud deck. I can see more than a hundred miles from this altitude. West beyond the crest of the divide is an unbroken deck of clouds with the sun shining on fairly level tops. Way, way off to the northwest is a higher, darker cloud wall, but that looks to be over Vancouver Island in British Columbia, or even beyond. The angle is too low to tell.

  Thirty minutes into the flight I am staring at the fuel sight-gauge. I’m not even across the crest yet and it seems that I’ve used a lot of fuel. Well, an 8,000-foot climb costs gasoline. Still, the little float bobber looks to be about where it usually rides after an hour’s flying.

  Oh, you’re just nervous. Lean the engine until she stumbles and forget the fuel gauge. Try to stay warm. Hold your heading. Look for holes. Damnation, boy, this is supposed to be fun!

  Thirty-four minutes after takeoff, at 7:19 P.M., I am abeam Lake Wenatchee. Just ahead are the mountains and the clouds. If the engine stops over the mountains the problem will not be saving this forty-nine-year-old antique airplane—it’ll be saving my forty-five-year-old neck. Jimmy Hanks and George Dustin, you knew it might come to this.

  Oh well. The bets are down and the wheel is turning.

  What’s out there? What can I see? The sun is low and diffused, but I’m still looking in the sun’s direction and the glare makes me squint. What I can see is clouds.

  Cold. I’m sitting hunched up to stay as much out of the wind as possible, so now my back is hurting. There’s a muscle above my left shoulder blade that likes to act up when I’m tired or have been sitting too long, and I certainly qualify on both counts today.

  I’m staring at several rocky crags, peaks, sticking up just above the clouds, and wondering which ones they are when I realize that I can see Mount Baker ahead and slightly to my right. Baker is an old friend from my A-6 days, a 10,800-foot snowcapped volcano that dominates the northern Cascades. I study the chart. My heading is too northerly. If Baker is there, I need maybe 270 degrees.

  I make the change and study the white mountain. She’s a great lady, a smaller version of Mount Rainier, which is visible behind my left wing. Rainier never captivated me like Baker did, and I have no idea why.

  After an hour’s flying the cloud tops are descending. I’m across the crest. But are there holes over Puget Sound, over the San Juans? There’s an upper layer out there, and lots of clouds over Vancouver Island that the sun is sinking behind. But yes, I think that the clouds descend and get choppy.

  I let the Queen descend into warmer air, down to 8,500 feet. I would like to go lower but dare not until I am sure of the holes. I check my watch again. Fifteen minutes, then I must make the decision to go back or go on.

  I remember another time years ago when I crossed the Cascades above an overcast. I was flying an A-6 then and the sun had been down for several hours. There was a slice of moon that night, just enough to let us plainly see the top of the overcast at ten or eleven thousand feet and entice us down to fly just above it. A cloud layer at night looks like a swell-filled gray sea, but the swells are frozen and you speed just above it on magic wings, as if you were living a dream.

  That night years ago we saw the glow of Seattle making the clouds incandescent, so we steered for it. As fate would have it there was a hole over Seattle and we could stare straight down to the twinkling lights of the great city. And we were young, my bombardier and I, so I rolled the Intruder on her side and we spiraled down into the hole until we were only a thousand feet or so above the housetops and streets and boulevards.

  Back then they didn’t have TCAs, ARSAs, or similar positive control nonsense. As long as we stayed out of airport traffic areas and stayed VFR, we were legal. We hoped. Of course, even if this wasn’t legal, the chances of our getting caught were very small.

  There was no way out of the hole except the way we had come in. So throttles forward, stick back, and we spiraled back up and out while the thunder of our engines shook every window in northern Seattle, even windows belonging to self-righteous hippies dedicated to saving the world. Especially their windows.

  Occasionally a night sky or an undercast makes me remember that evening, and the memory is alw
ays sweet.

  Ah, shake it off. That was long ago, when you were very young.

  Where might I be this evening over the earth? Judging from the position of Baker, I suspect I’m over the upper reaches of the Skagit River. With all the clouds it’s impossible to be sure.

  I look down, studying the clouds. Through occasional breaks in the gray I can see sheer cliffs of darker gray granite, with foggy air underneath the cloud deck. The fact that there are breaks is a good sign, but I am not tempted to descend into one of them. It’s plain there is no open space to fly in underneath— the clouds go down to the ground.

  Ahead, is that a gap over the sound? Isn’t that water I see? Well, it looks like water. It might be sky reflecting off fog. Looks like water though.

  And now it’s 8:15. Time to decide.

  Well, it looks like water way out there in that gap, and the cloud deck is much lower, and there are breaks in the clouds around the peaks and ridges below me, so yes. On we go.

  Now I let the Queen drift down another 2,000 feet. Mount Baker is off my right wing, so I must be paralleling the Skagit River, just south of it. That must be the Skagit Valley visible through the cloud gaps with fog rising up the ridges.

  I dial in Whidbey Approach on the radio, 120.7. My fingers are so numb with cold that I have difficulty with the knobs. The female controller is talking to some guy in a Cessna flying at 1,700 feet through the San Juans. He must be VFR.

  Islands! I see islands ahead! The San Juan Islands. The Queen’s nose is down and we are clipping along at 115 MPH indicated. I scrutinize the chart, study the islands I can see, then look again at the chart. But I can’t recognize anything.

  Isn’t that the cove on Orcas Island? Well, it could be, except for the fact it seems to be attached to the mainland. But where is a cove like that on the chart?

  Exasperated, I abandon the features I can’t identify and try to find one I can. Fixating on a feature that stymies you is one of the common errors of pilotage. I am searching for something familiar.