The Cannibal Queen

by Stephen Coonts

  With sailboats and powerboats and ships plowing the water of the bay under us, we flew northeast across the San Rafael Bridge, where we came out from under the cloud. I climbed back to altitude and turned the Queen over to Pete. In the mirror I could see his wide grin.

  To write about flying is not easy. To write about it well is extremely difficult. I don’t know that I do it well, but that is my goal.

  Jaded airline passengers who don’t fly themselves usually look skeptical when one tries to explain that flying is more than stick, rudder and airspeed control. It is more than manifold pressure and engine RPM. To catch the emotion of it, the feel, the wonder, on paper is the challenge.

  Those who don’t fly can easily envision the thrill associated with flying hot jets, the tactical military machines. They suspect those birds are the unholy offspring of a roller coaster and a Grand Prix race car and can easily believe that being at the controls is a gas, which it is.

  What they find more difficult to understand is that flying anything is fun, challenging, rewarding. Any airplane. Any machine that will leave the ground. The fun factor cannot be measured by reference to the airspeed indicator or the amount of money the aircraft would bring if sold.

  But flying is more than thrills, more than fun. Intertwined with all the tasks and sensations of aviation are some deep emotions that have stirred pilots since the Wright brothers. If those two ever felt any of it they didn’t try to let us know. Yet many of those who followed the Wrights into the sky have tried to tell us in words the essence of what they felt when aloft.

  Lindbergh and his wife were both excellent writers and gave us flying as exploration of the world and the human spirit. Saint-Exupery gave us the experience as poetry, Ernest Gann found both challenge and peace aloft, Richard Bach tried to show us the beauty. Alas, my writing is less focused. Flying gives me all of these emotions and a host of others that will probably take a lifetime of sorting and cataloging to get right.

  And language seems so pale when compared to the richness of the aviation experience. What words can I use to tell you how I felt when the Sierra Nevadas lay before me and I coaxed my little plane higher and higher into the clean moist sky?

  This cunning contraption of welded steel tubing, wood and fabric rose readily, willingly, until the upper tree line of those ragged summits was even with her, then below. Slowly, aided by five or six knots of quartering tailwind, she carried me toward them. As my heart thudded out some of the allotted moments of my life and the pistons spun the crankshaft, she carried me across the reddish crests toward the sunlight and shadow playing on the emerald blue lake of Tahoe.

  Shivering in the cockpit I watched the panorama change and thought how life resembles flight. We grow, mature, age slowly, imperceptibly, while the landscape of our lives changes at a steady, merciless pace. One day we realize we have traveled far on a journey that cannot be repeated or retraced. We turn and look back and find the perspective much different than it was coming through facing forward. Yet the past recedes at the inexorable pace necessary to sustain our forward progress. At some point the past is no longer visible—it is hidden by the crests we have crossed, and the haze. Then we have only our memory of it as we fly on toward an unknown destination.

  How does one capture all that on paper? How to say it so the reader will comprehend, feel, the essence?

  To write well of flying is not easy.

  An electronic billboard beside the taxiway at the Lake Tahoe airport gives me the current density altitude. Today it reads 7,400 feet. Actual field elevation above sea level is 6,264.

  The higher one goes, the thinner the air gets, until at some point way up there for every airplane the molecules are so far apart that an absolute ceiling is reached. The machine can go no higher without additional speed, which the engine cannot give. This altitude is different for every machine. The service ceiling is that altitude at which the aircraft can climb at only 200 feet per minute. The absolute ceiling is, of course, higher.

  And as air gets warmer, it gets thinner. Density altitude is a term that describes the density of the air that your craft must fly in by comparing it to a so-called “standard day”—29.92 inches of mercury and 59 degrees Fahrenheit. Today the air here at 6,264 feet is equivalent to 7,400 on a standard day.

  Density altitude is not an esoteric gee-whiz number. Like indicated airspeed—which is a mechanical measurement of the actual molecules available to fly in—density altitude is a computation of the actual molecules available to provide lift. Both numbers are equally important. Lift is what flight is all about. Without lift we are firmly grounded.

  At this density altitude at Lake Tahoe the Cannibal Queen takes her own sweet time about accelerating, rolling for a significant time before the tail lightens, then rises slowly to the flight attitude. The airspeed indicator needle has also got a case of the slows. The engine is sucking in this warm, thin air and so produces less power. How much less is recorded on the manifold pressure gauge, which reads a mere 22 inches. The propeller thrashes the thin air and gets less bite. And the wings must be going faster—a higher true airspeed—to get sufficient molecules passing under them to provide the lift necessary to raise our weight from the ground. The amount of lift necessary to support the plane never changes.

  When the Queen finally achieves an indicated 65 MPH I tweak the nose up and she reluctantly leaves the ground. I say reluctantly because the rate of climb is quite modest.

  I cross over the airport boundary and climb straight ahead. I am a thousand feet above the ground when I cross the shoreline of the lake. Still climbing I continue northerly along the west shore.

  When I finally reach 8,500 feet on the altimeter, only 2,300 feet above the lake, I level off and reduce power. Soon the Queen settles at an indicated airspeed of 95 MPH. Our true airspeed is much higher, but that doesn’t matter. What matters are the 95 MPH-worth of molecules passing around the wings.

  Halfway up the lake U.S. Route 50 cuts east through a pass in the mountains and drops down to Carson City on the high desert below. I angle for the pass.

  East of the mountains lies the central basin of the western United States at about 4,000 feet above sea level. The Sierras are a wall running north and south, the result, I suspect, of an uplift along an ancient fault line, much like the eastern slope of the Rockies in Colorado.

  Over the brown desert the air is turbulent, roiled by thermals, and the Queen bounces along. I fight the stick and try to maintain altitude as I fly northeast for Fallon, Nevada. My efforts yield mixed results. I manage to hold altitude plus or minus 200 feet, yet the airspeed varies between 80 MPH in downdrafts and 125 in updrafts. And we are rocking and rolling.

  I call Fallon Approach to see if Restricted Area 4803 is hot, and while we are trying to establish who I am and what I’m flying, an F/A-18 Hornet goes squirting across the desert down in the weeds. He’s subsonic but moving right along.

  Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada, has no fleet squadrons that call it home, but every air wing in the Navy spends at least two to four weeks here before every cruise. Flight crews need to learn to drop real bombs in a safe, controlled practice area before they are called upon to do it in combat. Fallon is where they do that. A civilian pilot literally takes his life in his hands if he enters without permission one of the restricted areas that ring the base. Yet amazingly, every so often a Cessna or Piper putts across a target that a half-dozen Hornets or Intruders are in the process of pulverizing.

  R-4803 is cold just now, so Approach gives me permission to cross it. As I do I look for the run-in line to the target. There! I used to go roaring up that line at 500 knots while the bombardier worked the system.

  Fallon Municipal lies to the north of the Naval Air Station. Fallon Muni now has about 5,000 feet of asphalt, the air base 14,000 feet. You wonder how any fool could mistake one for the other. Especially at night when the runway lights are illuminated.

  The thermals and a crosswind make my approach to the municipal airstr
ip tricky. But I have her nailed until five feet above the runway, when I hit a wind sheer. The bottom drops out. I add power but not enough—another crummy landing.

  The air on the desert floor is furnace hot. Over 90 degrees. In my sweatshirt and leather jacket I am sweltering. I kill the engine by the fuel pump, stand up in the cockpit and start stripping off clothes.

  Two women come out to greet me—one is a lady who works here to get flying money and the other is the mother of the owner of the FBO. They help me gas the Queen; then I ask, “Any jets from the base ever landed here by accident?”

  They laugh. “No, never.”

  Well, I did it twenty years ago this summer, so the proper answer is, Not lately. Navy pilots now are probably smarter than they used to be. I did it one night while giving the squadron flight surgeon a ride. And I wasn’t the first one. A year or two before my misadventure an F-8 Crusader landed here instead of at the base and went off the end of the runway trying to get stopped. The fighter flipped over in the dirt and the pilot was killed.

  How could such a thing happen? Easy, if you are complacent, not devoting all your attention to the task of flying. Then visual cues arrive and register, but your brain refuses to process them. You expect only routine and subconsciously reject anything that doesn’t fit the expected. Complacency, or mental unpreparedness, probably causes more accidents in and out of aviation than all other causes combined.

  I remember my skipper telling the commander of the air wing that a lesser pilot than Coonts would have killed himself landing an A-6 at night at Fallon Muni, which only had 4,200 feet of asphalt then. The air wing commander agreed, but tartly observed that a better pilot wouldn’t have landed there at all.

  As they say, there are two kinds of pilots—them that has and them that will. My fear is that I will do it a second time. In a plane like the Cannibal Queen that lacks any electronic navigation aids, this mistake is ridiculously easy to make. I identify a town based on prominent landmarks, and the airport by its position in relation to the town and the direction of its runways. I’ve never seen a lot of these towns and fields before, so it would be easy as pie to think little strip B is really A and plant it, only to find that Oops! Dang, did it again!

  I suspect more than a few pilots have made this mistake and never told a soul.

  The Cannibal Queen rises off the runway at Fallon like a fly leaving molasses. The density altitude must be over 8,000 feet. Safely airborne, I call Approach and make sure R-4803 is still cold, then head northwest to join 1-80 for the trip west across the pass to Reno.

  More turbulence. This is the worst bouncing I have yet endured in this airplane. It’s lucky David is not with me—he would not enjoy this ride.

  Coming into Reno, Approach tells me the wind is out of the west at twelve knots, then assigns me runway 16 Left. I think about it for half a minute, then ask if I could use runway 25 instead. This request is granted.

  My landing here is better than the one at Fallon. I am expecting a wind sheer near the desert floor so am not surprised when it comes.

  At 7 P.M. I tie down the Queen at the Reno Jet Center amid the hot twins and corporate jets and stroll across the ramp pretending I am somebody. Now for the bright lights and big city.

  My hotel had a variety of fliers displayed on the registration desk advertising marriage chapels. This is a cottage industry that thrives in Reno and Vegas. Several of the big casinos even have a chapel in the basement. As the desk lady examined my credit card I helped myself to the chapel brochures.

  “Are you getting married?” she asked.

  “Not today,” I told her. “I’ve taken the cure. But if I catch another bad case of romance I want to be prepared.”

  Two of these matrimonial emporiums are visible from my ninth-floor balcony. I stand there watching the evening deepen and enjoying the cooling breezes and inspect the brochures.

  “Do The Deed Before They Change Their Minds” is the credo of one establishment. They accept five kinds of credit cards and offer “simple fast service.” There is courtesy transportation for all clients, a florist and wedding boutique on the premises, professional-quality color photography, and they video-record all weddings “for your review.” With the video out there it will be difficult to later claim that you were drunk. Apparently you have to pay extra for all these extras, but if you present the brochure you get a $10 discount on your wedding.

  The best deal is probably the other one, which advertises “free witness, free audio cassette, free marriage scroll, candlelight and organ music, and flowers, pictures and video available.” Each of these bullets is preceded by a little heart, which is a nice touch, I think.

  This establishment gives a ten percent discount if you present the brochure, but only “one discount per wedding.” This proviso is obviously designed to prevent you from saving the discounts and demanding that your eleventh wedding be a freebie.

  If The Donald gets in a marrying mood while he’s in town partying with Maria or Carla, I’ll bet he’d go to this second chapel. A free witness is nothing to sneeze at. Can you envision The Donald out on the sidewalk offering five bucks to a wino to come inside and watch him commit holy matrimony?

  Three things make Nevada special—desert, prostitution, and gambling. Most of the state is desert so hot and arid it takes a thousand acres to keep a steer alive. If the miserable critter can find water. The state has no law criminalizing the oldest profession, so each county gets to say yea or nay. The only legal whorehouses in America are here.

  Last year the Internal Revenue Service acquired title to one after the owner forgot to send in a check, so for a while there Uncle Sam had some practicing prostitutes on the federal payroll. Everyone snickered about it, but it was no big deal, really. We’ve had congressmen for over 200 years.

  I considered bidding on the whorehouse but finally decided against it. I’d never get any writing done. Besides, I probably couldn’t have afforded it. Still, if I had Clancy’s money I might have sent in a bid just to see.

  Gambling is the industry that pays the electric bills. Every wide spot in the road has a casino and almost every shack has a few slot machines. The airport terminals are full of them. The sound of Nevada is the clunk of levers being pulled and the whirring of spinning wheels. This clunk, whir, click, click, click is accented at random intervals by the clinking of coins falling into metal trays. Ever wonder why they don’t make those trays out of plastic? Because they want everyone to hear those coins spitting out. There’s another lucky winner!

  It’s hard to believe, but tens of thousands of people come from all over the United States by car, train, bus and airplane to feed quarters into the slots. Hordes of women with rolls of quarters in empty margarine containers work those arms day and night. Clunk, whir, click, click, click.

  Only in Nevada can you put up a billboard that says “Hot Slots” and attract thousands of women. In New York City that sign would only get you a few curious teenagers and dirty old men.

  The only cities of any size in Nevada are Las Vegas and Reno, and they have different cultures. Vegas is polyester pants and bouffant hairdos while Reno is more blue-collar. More blue-collar? Yeah, jeans and message T-shirts and lots of tattoos.

  I wandered around several Reno casinos reading T-shirts and inspecting tattoos. This evening was the first of a three-day extravaganza they call Hot August Nights, which will bring 20,000 polished old cars to town and all the people that polish them. These tattooed people must be polishers. I haven’t seen this many tattoos since the time my ship left Hong Kong after a ten-day visit.

  Reno is soaked with atmosphere tonight and I’m collecting drippings. After all, I’m a working writer. Maybe I’m all wet, but the mood I sense in these get-rich-quick glitz joints is quiet desperation. It’s the undercurrent that’s always there, the background against which the drinking, the gambling, the nervous laughter occurs.

  Money comes hard for 99% of the human race. The one percent for whom this isn’t true aren
’t sitting in Reno at the blackjack tables or leaning over a crap table with a fistful of five-dollar chips watching dice roll around. The people here earned their money by working for it. Now it bleeds away as they assure themselves their luck will turn. They stand with a week’s wages in their hand and watch someone much like themselves win fifty or a hundred on the roll of the dice. If only it would happen to me!

  I parted with a fifty-dollar bill and got ten of those five-dollar chips. They’re plastic, colorful, somehow without the emotional attachment that I have for five-dollar bills that I earned. This is funny money, Monopoly stuff, easy to wager, easy to lose. That’s the theory anyway.

  I selected a blackjack table without any other players. The dealer was a Korean lady, Mrs. Lee. With the skill acquired by thousands of hours of practice she flipped the cards across the green velvet. After I lost the first three hands I begin winning some. More people came to the table. The guy beside me won three in a row, then muttered something about how much he’s lost already. He’s one of the desperate ones.

  I quit after sucking down two free drinks, while I was still $65 ahead. I was a hundred ahead at one point but I lost some of it. So I quit. Sure as God made man willing to take a chance, I would have lost the $65 and the $50 I started with if I had stayed at that table another twenty minutes.

  The next morning I came down to the lobby of my hotel at 6 A.M. As in most Reno hotels, you must exit to the street through a bar filled with slot machines. A man and a woman unwilling to give up the night were still nursing beer and cigarettes. They were the only patrons. The windowless dark room smelled stuffy, stale.