Test Pilot's Daughter: Revenge (15 page)

“
Did you remember to switch tanks?” Billy queried.

“
What do you mean?” she asked.

“
I wondered why you didn’t ask me where the fuel tank selector was. I thought you knew what you were doing. You said you were a pilot.”

“
What fuel tank selector?”

Billy walked over to the plane, opened the door and pointed to a big red lever on the left side of the cockpit. The pointer was clearly on the right tank, the empty one.

“
Looks like you ran all the fuel out of the right tank.”

Christina’s knees buckled as she suddenly realized what had happened. She pulled the manual out from a side pocket and read about the fuel system. “The Cessna I’ve been training in flows fuel from both tanks at the same time.” Pointing at the manual, “This plane requires the pilot to mechanically select the tank feeding gas to the engine.”

“
Well that’s
great!”
Jessica cheered her on. “All we have to do is switch tanks, crank up the engine and get the hell out of here.”

“
No, there is a problem.” Christina looked behind her down the beach. “The book says we need 2,200 feet of hard runway to get this plane off the ground. There’s just no way we have a half-mile of beach here. We’ll never get airborne, especially on a hot day with minimal lift. Billy, would you please walk off the length of that beach and tell me how many paces, just to make sure?”

“
So what do we do then?” Heather said with a troubled look. Her eyes were wide with alarm and beginning to fill with tears.

“
Listen,” Christina said in a comforting tone. “Don’t worry. Hank was on an IFR flight plan. I’m sure they’ve been tracking us all the way, even without radio contact. They’re frantically searching for us as we speak. Worst case, I expect they’ll be here in a couple of hours. It would probably be a good idea to pull up some driftwood and start a fire, then they’ll have no trouble spotting us from the air.”

“
Don’t you remember?” cried Heather with a worried tone. “They didn’t even look for Kennedy’s plane until the next day when someone called the airport wondering where they were.”

“
That’s different,” she replied. “He was a private pilot, flying under Visual Flight Rules without a flight plan, and he wasn’t talking to anyone. I know Hank filed IFR, and I can assure you they’re looking for us. From our radar track, they’ll know the general area. Now, Billy, could you round up some wood and get us a nice smoky fire going?”

“
Okay, but I’ll need the lighter. It’s in my granddad’s pocket.”

She wasn’t too happy about the prospect of handling a dead person, but they had no choice. All four went to the grueling task of pulling Hank out of the plane. They drug his limp body across the beach and put it in the shade of a big rock.

Heather and Jessica put on their swimsuits to deal with the afternoon heat. To kill time they started wading around in the shallows. Every time a plane flew over, they would group together, wave their arms and watch for any signs they had been discovered. After a couple of hours, they had seen a few planes, but none seemed to be searching. Christina tried the radios again without success and began to wonder how long this would take. She figured once the controllers saw the plane disappear from the radar screen, search and rescue would be mobilized. Assuming they went down in the water, one would expect the greatest urgency. She was certain that Hank filed IFR, because she heard him call it in.

“
Anybody hungry?” Heather asked. “I’ve got a bag of double-stuffed Oreo cookies in my case if anyone’s interested.” She broke out the treat, and they devoured the entire bag in a matter of seconds. It was as if they hadn’t eaten anything in a week.

“
Boy, am I thirsty,” Jessica chuckled. “Anybody got a cold glass of milk?”

“
There’s some bottled water in the survival gear,” Billy offered as he went back to the plane. He pulled out the boxes and started going through them. “Eight bottles of water,” he reported, passing out two each.

“
You’re an angel,” Heather said. She unscrewed one bottle and started gulping it down.

“
Hold it!”
shouted Christina. “I would go slow with that if I were you. We don’t know how long it’ll take.”

“
Thought you said worst case was a couple of hours?” Heather complained.

“
Yeah, I know what I said.” Christina was losing confidence. “They should’ve been here already. I can’t tell you exactly what’s going on, but there’s no way of knowing exactly how long it’ll be. Look around. Do you see any cold mountain streams? You better go slow on that water just in case.”

Heather frowned and walked down the beach to be alone.

* * *

The sun started to settle, and there were no signs of rescue. Billy got the feeling something was terribly wrong. He wasn’t a pilot, but he knew that anyone on an IFR flight plan was tracked for collision avoidance, even if communications were lost. The controllers should’ve been able to pinpoint their location. He also knew it would soon be dark.

“
I don’t want to sound too negative, Christina, but it looks like we’re going to be here for the night,” Billy said. “No way they’ll be able to spot us after dark. Why don’t I get some stuff out of the plane and try to arrange something to sleep on?”

“
Great idea, Billy,” she replied.

Billy was still mourning for Pop, but the sight of three college girls in their brightly colored bikinis didn’t go unnoticed. The concept of camping out for a few days with beautiful girls was inspiring. He figured his Boy Scout training might make him a valuable commodity.

“
I don’t need a bed,” Billy offered. “I’ll stay awake and guard the camp while you girls sleep,” he lowered his voice and tried to sound manly. “Got to keep an eye out for drug runners and pirates. You know there are some bad people around these islands.”

“
That’s a good idea,” snickered Jessica. “We’ll sleep and you watch out for pirates. By the way,” she said sarcastically, “what would you do if you saw one?”

Billy was embarrassed. “Well, I’m not sure. Do we have any weapons? Guess I could hit them with my granddad’s fishing pole.”

They laughed out loud as Heather returned from a long walk. “What’s so funny?”

“
Nothing,” said Jessica, “we just elected Billy as our bodyguard.”

Billy just stood there; he could feel his face flush bright red.

Darkness soon engulfed the little island, and the survivors began to settle for the night. Gathered around the campfire after their exhausting ordeal, the girls started dozing. When they were all asleep, Billy was determined to be the man. Suddenly he felt as though he had been drugged. It was almost impossible to keep his eyes open. Gazing over the blackness of the ocean in a blank stare, his eyelids became quite heavy. Going over some of his survival training in his head, he batted his eyes struggling to avoid inexorable sleep. He shook his head. Out in the middle of nowhere, there was an all consuming feeling of stark solitude. Under a dark sky full of millions of bright stars, the campfire shot hot cinders straight up painting the blackness with faint, red specks of light. Surrounded by the hypnotic sounds of a crackling fire and little wavelets caressing the beach, Billy’s mind wandered across the night and sank into a dreamy abyss.

* * *

Beerriock!

A loud shriek broke the quiet morning. A large seagull had flown onto the beach to inspect the survivors, looking for something to eat. The troops started to stir. Christina stretched long arms and fought to open her eyes. She had been dreaming about her childhood. For once, it was a pleasant dream reflecting memories of her mom. She gazed around in a sleepy stupor when reality slapped her dead in the face. She got up and started poking her friends.

“
Everybody, wake up. We need a plan. Obviously, I was
dead
wrong. Excuse the pun. I can’t understand why we haven’t been rescued, but we better start preparing for a longer stay. You guys start looking through the gear and make an inventory of what we have. I’m gonna study the manuals on the plane and try to figure out what happened. This type of GPS is supposed to record the last minute of radio conversation electronically. If I can figure out how to play it back, I should be able to hear what Hank told the controllers before he passed on.”

While Billy and the girls unpacked and inventoried the remainder of the gear, Christina climbed into the cockpit looking for the operating manual of the GPS. After searching the cockpit, she finally found it stuffed in a side pocket with other documents. She switched on the Master and turned on the GPS. Following the instructions, she found three buttons, one for each twenty second segment of audio. Pushing the last button first, she clearly recognized her own voice, “Mayday, Mayday, Saratoga Two Eight Niner Niner Kilo, five souls aboard. . .” To move back in recorded time, she pushed the first button and heard what sounded like a flight controller. “November Two Eight Niner Niner Kilo, radio check, how do you read? Over. Niner Niner Kilo this is Miami Center, how do you read? Over.”

She knew if there was any information of value, it would be in Hank’s answer. Holding her breath, she pushed the center button. Instead of the anticipated response, she was shocked to hear a very strange transmission.

“
Uh. . .Miami Center, this is Niner Niner Kilo. Read you loud and clear. We’d like to cancel our IFR flight plan and go VFR. My clients want to explore some of the islands below.”

“
Whatever you say, Niner Niner Kilo. IFR plan is cancelled. Squawk VFR and have a nice day.”

“
God help us!” Christina cursed.

Not believing what she had just heard, she pushed the button again, but there was no mistake. Whoever gave that response was up to no good. As a matter of fact, the message was as much a killer as if someone had put a gun to their heads and pulled the trigger. Simply put, it meant there would be no rescue. Without an active flight plan, there was no reason for flight controllers to initiate a search. It might be days before anyone realized they were missing. Even worse, cleared to descend to lower altitudes meant the radar track would not be recorded and controllers would be unable to reconstruct their flight path. Even when someone finally realized they were missing, rescuers would have no idea where they were.

But it wasn’t the message so much that shocked Christina as the
voice.
The person responding to air traffic control with their call letters was
not
Hank Rogers, nor was it Billy. The voice was distinctly female, and it sounded quite familiar. There was something about the way she said “clients” instead of “passengers” that gave her away. The voice was the female pilot Christina had met in the FBO. She must have been somewhere nearby, transmitting on the same frequency. The GPS would record all radio traffic on that frequency, regardless of its origin.

“
Gilmore cancelled our flight plan!” Christina spoke to herself, flabbergasted. “But, why?” Why would a stranger transmit a message from another plane with Hank’s call sign, a message that would doom them to a plane crash or a slow death at sea? How would she know Hank’s condition? The only logical explanation was the female pilot flying behind them knew Hank was dead. She must have had something to do with it. At that instant Christina recalled Lazer’s last words,

Well, you gals better watch your six. I think this guy’s capable of anything.

Lazer’s comment made Weston come to mind, along with the story of the other coeds. She remembered what he said as they prepared for the trip:

I know some people in West Palm who can give you a great deal on a charter. I insist you let me make all the arrangements.

She thought it odd when he had volunteered to pay.
How strange!
Lazer was no less than a prophet
. It looked as though Gilmore at their six o’clock position had effectively shot them right out of the sky.
Could it be?
Could Weston have plotted this elaborate scheme to get rid of Heather?
Christina tried to clear her head and think logically. How could he pull it off? He would’ve had to hire someone in West Palm to give Hank a slow working drug, and then be right there in the exact right airspace to deflect the inquisitive nature of flight controllers. It was unthinkable that any human could be so callused, but there was no other explanation. The only question was, how did he manage to find a pilot willing to do such a horrible thing, especially a female pilot? And how did Gilmore manage to do it?