It fires the imagination. The sun sinks below the western hills of the city in a conflagration of red and orange, painting the desert. Suddenly, a fall of midnight-blue ushers in the first magnitude stars—the early arrivals. A curtain of darkness spreads over the sky, hosting a crowd of lesser stars, the smaller stitches of heaven. One by one the constellations rise over the horizon, tracing their arcs across the heavens, a nightly procession across the firmament.
The desert cools. The camels are fresh, capable of great distances at night. Tents are folded and the barking and mewling of departure signals the start of the caravans on their long trek across the sand. Nomadic tribes, wanderers of the desert, depart on well-footed tracks over an ocean of undulating dunes. Overhead, the stars serve as way stations, constant companions, intensely personal, guiding the camel drivers through the darkness. The telling of stories passes from father to son, generation to generation. Under a starlit vault these wanderers of the desert grow older, edging closer and closer to God.
Shortly after dawn, I got into a clapped-out old Ford taxi, which inched its way out of town, passing donkeys, camels, and buses bound for the chaotic bustle of the market. I had hoped to be airborne within three hours of waking—too optimistic a goal for Egypt. Interminable delays plagued my departure; officials thumped their stamps on my passport, exit visa, declaration of entry, landing and navigation clearances. Two hours of painstaking procedures led me through the depressing halls of the airport. Authorities sat like spiders spinning their bureaucratic web of ordinances, waiting for under-the-table payments.
By nine in the morning, the sun was burning the desert. High above the hills east of Luxor the cyanic blue of a cloudless sky beckoned. I was late, and a long flight remained ahead of me. I had decided to avoid flying over Sudan, the largest country in Africa, because of the ongoing civil war in the south and the extortionate overflight fees demanded by Khartoum. Instead, I would fly across Egypt’s eastern desert and south along the Red Sea to Djibouti.
The temperature had climbed to forty-nine degrees centigrade on the ground. My electronics, rated for temperatures far lower, were inoperative, leaving me without navigational instruments or communications. I climbed for one and a half hours after takeoff, dead reckoning on the compass, before reaching a cruising altitude of eleven thousand feet—and cooler temperatures which revived the instruments.
The plane’s controls felt unresponsive with the weight of full tanks in the thin hot air. I was buffeted by hot-air thermals rising eighteen thousand feet above the desert. I flew out of Luxor’s airspace without communication. Only the drone of the engine and the occasional bang of the ferry tank expanding under altitude pressure punctuated my progress over hundreds of miles of empty desert.
I watched the plane trace its shadow on the sand below. Slowly a few scattered veins of black and red lava rock coursed their way into the eastern foothills of Kosseir. There was no sign of human existence anywhere.
In the distance, dark, threatening clouds walled the western banks of the Red Sea. Electrical discharges sprouted tiny crosses of warning on the green-lit screen of my storm scope. The approaching cloud bank gradually turned black and yellowish-green. The warm air of the desert clashed with the cooler air over the sea to form lightning with repeated flashes over the fuselage.
I diverted from a southerly course to avoid entering the massive storm clouds. Thunderheads, powered by the heat of the desert, created dangerous updraughts capable of tearing the wings off the plane. Since I didn’t have permission to fly over Saudi Arabian airspace and Sudan was also out of bounds, I had little room to manoeuvre between the thunderstorms that spread over the Red Sea before reaching the latitude of Port Sudan.
By five-thirty the setting sun had thrown a shadow over my port wing. The faint tinge of the instrument lights marked the end of day. The cockpit gradually evolved into the warm glow of numbers and gauges as I plunged deeper into the night. The GPS indicated four more flying hours to Djibouti. I had not communicated on the radio for nine hours. My body ached with stiffness from the lack of movement. I needed to rest.
Two hours later I detected small pinpricks of light on the horizon from the Eritrean coast north of Djibouti. The contour map indicated a coast that was ringed with steep mountains; I needed to gain altitude immediately.
The coastal mountains of Eritrea, majestic and rugged, rise dramatically from the sea to form the eastern wall of the Great Rift Valley. This valley is part of an enormous geological fault that extends from the island of Madagascar through East Africa and Ethiopia to the Red Sea; the spine of Africa, massive in scope and beauty.
Moist warm air from the Red Sea pushes up the sides of these Eritrean mountains, cooling the moisture into thick cumulus cloud, which produces turbulence and potential for icing. Soon the plane’s running lights reflected a halo of light off the first bank of cloud, which obscured all visibility. I climbed higher, well above thirteen thousand feet, to safely cross the mountain range north of Djibouti. The plane laboured under the constant buffeting of air currents and thick cloud. Sharp, short jolts jerked the plane’s control cables, which alternated from slack to tense with a snap. Flying became more and more challenging.
Suddenly, the engine faltered. Its familiar, constant vibration and tonal pitch stuttered, threatening to stop altogether. For an instant I was transfixed, paralyzed, in total disbelief. Every nerve jangled, every muscle tensed, as I focused on this life-threatening and unexpected development. I pulled on the carburetor-icing knob. The engine continued to stumble, dangerously close to a stall. There had been no icing all day, so instinctively I dismissed icing as the cause of the problem. The engine coughed again, caught once more in a valiant attempt, and then fell silent—leaving only the sound of rushing wind through the airframe. It was startling the way the silence broke in.
I quickly set the controls into a glide, watching the altimeter unwind at a rate of eight hundred feet per minute. I could scarcely believe it. This was no practice drill, no routine exercise. Alone, no communication, no visibility, dropping into an unfamiliar, uninhabited mountain range at night. This was a flying nightmare—as bad as it gets.
My mind raced over the available options and there were precious few. Crashing into a remote set of mountains in the dark with no visibility meant the chances of survival were negligible. I was struck by a sudden overwhelming sense of weariness that dulled the threat of impending disaster. A sense of resignation took hold, the end was unavoidable. I was so close to completing the trip. All the effort, the calculation of risk, the preparation, the hours of flying—to have it end like this was so utterly futile. I thought of Krystyne. How would she ever know what had happened? A wave of regret washed over me at the unfairness of it all. Was this really taking place?
I forced myself to get a grip, to concentrate, to do everything possible until the last second before the plane slammed into the mountainside. There are prescribed procedures for engine failures, starting with a review of instruments and gauges, one by one, starting left to right. I methodically went through the routines, conscious of the pressure of depleting time and altitude.
The port fuel tank gauge read empty. The fuel selector valve pointed to the left tank . . . “God Almighty, I forgot to switch over to the starboard fuel tank. I’ve run out of fuel. How could that have happened?” Switching to the full fuel tank, I reset the mixture to restart the engine. The Cessna Continental O47J engine is susceptible to flooding when hot; it needs careful coaxing. “Please God, let it start.” Fully anticipating a flash of mountainside to suddenly fill the windscreen as the plane continued its downward plunge into darkness, I reached for the ignition.
The engine restarted. I eased the stick back in an effort to regain the thirty-five hundred feet I had lost over the previous four minutes. I was below the highest mountain peaks, in danger of flying blindly at full power into the side
