Chapter 10

Climbing away, through 650 feet to get to 1000 feet above ground level, Angie appeared in the cockpit with the headset was still on her head, pushing her hair in a funny configuration. She had the coil of the headset audio-cable in her left hand.

“Get strapped in and plug that headset in!” I shouted above the roar of the engines. Looks like Angie either heard me or understood what had to be done. She dropped into the co-pilot seat and plugged the headset in, then strapped on the harness.

“Ah, that’s better.” Giggle. “I can hear you now. Hello from your co-pilot.” She said and wiggled her bum in the seat to get comfortable.

“Good. Let’s get going on our detouring scam.” I said, and before I could execute the climbing turn to the left, Angie spotted something out of the right-side window.

“What’s that down there on the right, there on the other side of that dune? Does it look like a bunch of vehicles?” She asked. I glanced over to the right and spotted the dark spots of vehicles parked at the bottom of a dune.

Let’s go see,” I said and started a lazy turn to the southeast as if I was setting up for a course to Lüderitz.

I kept up the turn and as I came around to the east the six dark spots in front of us morphed into Toyota Land Cruisers. Figures stood to the side of the vehicles and dark zigzag discoloration of the sand led from the top of the dune down to the vehicles, showing the trail left by those watching Roland’s camp.

I glanced down at the throttle quadrant of the DC-3. I swept all the control levers, prop control, and throttles forward to the stops in one smooth motion. The DC-3 responded by surging forward. I felt a slight vibration throughout the aircraft airframe. She was raring to go. I pushed the yoke forward, and the DC-3 dropped her nose.

“Let’s go see if Max would like a sand shower,” I said and was rewarded with a giggle as the answer.

We dropped lower by bringing the throttles back a bit and setting 80% on both the prop control and the control levers. The figures and vehicles out on the dune came up fast.

With the belly of the DC-3 only ten feet off the deck, we sped on towards the intended target. When we were fifty metres away from the figures, they must have realized that we were not going to pull up. I judged the incline of the dune slope and compensated with yoke input. Angie sat rigid in her seat, biting her fingernails.

Max’s men saw us coming and decided to hit the deck, just as we sailed over them, spraying them with desert sand. I pushed the throttles to full forward and pulled back on the yoke. As the result, the DC-3 lifted her nose skywards, sailing over the top of the dune at 280 kilometres per hour. The propwash and wake turbulence of the aircraft blew about a ton of sand and dust down on the figures sprawled over the dune at the back of us.

“WEEE! That was fun,” Angie exclaimed. But I had to watch Roland’s camp and Big Daddy Dune coming up fast. I flipped the DC-3 over on her left wingtip, kicked in a little right rudder making the rudder act as an elevator, and the elevators to act as a rudder, so as not to lose altitude in the hard turn. This method of keeping the nose up is an old trick, especially if you want to perform a knife-edge manoeuvre in aerobatics. Although very near to the aerobatic maneuver, I did not intend to do a “knife-edge” with this heavy aircraft.

With these PT6 turboprop engines fitted, and the strengthened wings and fuselage, this was indeed a new breed of aircraft. The DC-3 took the turn as a piece of cake and came around to the north holding altitude and speed, performing like a fighter aircraft she was not supposed to be. Her turboprop engines singing a screaming song.

I dropped my gaze to the fuel gauges for a moment. The needle did not even move during all this hard manoeuvring and full-throttle performance. We still had fuel for about two hours. We need only fifty minutes of flying to complete our journey. Ten minutes out towards Lüderitz, and then turn to Swakopmund, somewhere to the north of us.

I brought the aircraft level again and climbed to 6000 feet MSL (mean sea level), direction Lüderitz. I set the autopilot for the intended course and altitude, then turned to Angie as “George” took over.

“Let’s make old Rolly think we’re going to Lüderitz,” I said.

Giggle.

“I’m afraid to ask, but how does it feel to be flying in this beauty again.”

“Weird, sitting here and it’s not my father in the left seat,” Angie said. “You even have his headset on.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“No, don’t be sorry, you’re doing fine. If my father was around to see that bit of flying you did back there, he would have given you a ‘Bells.’” She said, referring to the Bells Whisky advertisement where the one guy toasts another man who did a good deed by using the words: “Give that man a Bells!”

I laughed. “He would have probably killed me for abusing his beloved aircraft like that.”

“No, he sometimes treated me to a 360 in this aircraft,” Angie said and looked out the side window, her hands folded in her lap. I saw a sad expression reflected to me from that side window. This girl has memories, and they are being brought back to life now.

By this time, we were approaching our turning point, and I disconnected the autopilot altitude hold by dialling in the desired altitude of 2500 feet MSL, and a decent rate of 900 feet per minute. Over our waypoint, I dialled in the navigation code for Swakopmund. “George (the GARMIN GNS 530 autopilot), worked out and displayed the course to Swakopmund.

I depressed the “NAV” button. Immediately the “HDN” button popped out and blinked out. This activated the flight plan on the GPS in GPS mode, and the DC-3 responded by turning her nose towards the west, and kept turning to the north, intercepting the navigational course to Swakopmund forty-four minutes away. Then she followed the invisible line in the sky to Swakopmund, now and then shaking her wings; dipping or rising the nose as the rising air currents from the hot and uneven desert surface, caused her to correct the heading and vertical navigation.

Ten minutes went by without a word being said in the cockpit. Angie started to fidget around and then turned to me.

“Did you check if the toilet is in working order?”

“Yeah. It’s good. There’s even toilet paper and ‘bug spray,’ if you need.”

“Thanks! I’ll be back...” Angie said and unhooked her harness and took off her headset.

“Can you say that in an Arnold Schwarzenegger voice?” I shouted above the noise of the engines.

“Beast! Getting me back with my own words,” Angie shouted back and slipped past me. I felt ginger hair brushing my arm.

“While you’re up and out there, see if the stewardess could rustle up some coffee,” I said to Angie in the passing.

“I’m the co-pilot and it seems also the stewardess around here.” She yelled over the noise. “Maybe if you behave yourself, I’ll get you some coffee.” With that, she shook her head to straighten her hair over her shoulders, and with her nose held high disappeared out the cockpit door into the cargo cabin of the aircraft.

I smiled at my reflection on the left side window. What a chili pepper pip this girl seems to be. Like Cookie said: “Tigers have sharp claws!” Oh, well.

(Let’s for a moment drop in on Max and company.) Max stood perplexed as the DC-3 rose out of the Dooievlei and climbed away to the north. The asshole Roland was supposed to call him if that hired help was going to fly the aircraft out. What now? Why did that double-crossing sun-of-a-bitch not call him?

“The plane is coming back!” Günter shouted. Max watched and saw the aircraft make a turn towards Lüderitz, but then kept up the turn and started to line up on them, dropping lower and lower in the sky.

“The asshole! He’s going to crash the damn thing!” Someone else shouted. Then the aircraft levelled out just feet above the desert floor. Max saw the aircraft approaching, coming in low and fast.

“Watch out! He’s too low!” Another voice shouted, and at that moment Max knew that they had been spotted and this guy will let them know that he has seen them. The aircraft was getting bigger by the second and Max could not take it anymore.

“DOWN!” he shouted and hit the deck, covering his head with his arms. The rest of the guys, seeing Max go down, followed and dived into the desert sand.

The aircraft came on and with a low hum, and then with a “whoosh” sound, it was over them. Max pushed himself up on his elbows and at that moment the dust and sand kicked up by the slipstream and propwash of the aircraft hit him full in the face. The sand grains, sandblasting Max and his men, felt like bee stings penetrating his nose, ears, and eyes. Too late he threw up his arms to protect his face. Then the slipstream caught him and blew him over on his back, while the settling sand and dust sifted down on him.

In twenty seconds, it was over, but it felt like minutes of torture. Slowly Max got to his hands and knees andhe looked around him. Everywhere his men started to get up, shaking sand and dust out of every place on their bodies. The blasting sand and dust penetrated in under all clothing, inside noses and ears and eyes, even down open mouths and throats.

Through red burning eyes, he looked back at the DC-3, which just crested the dune and disappeared towards Dooievlei.

“The ... asshole mother-...” he croaked and started to cough. Handfuls of sand and dust came vomiting up and pooled in the sand underneath Max’s face. Shaking his head to clear his vision, Max was beside himself with rage.

A few metres away, Günter, in his mad dive to get out of the way of the aircraft, had torn open the stitches in his shoulder and was bleeding like a slaughtered pig. The pain was blinding. He clawed with his hands to rip off his shirt in a futile attempt to stem the gushing blood, pulsing out of the reopened wound.

The rest of the gang sat dazed and in shock at what just happened.

(Roland’s camp.) Still not believing in what had transpired a few minutes ago, Roland crumpled the note in his huge fist, threw it to the ground, and then stomped on it.

“The audacity! The nerve! What do those two think they are up to?” Roland asked. Cookie, still in a jovial mood answered:

“Eloping...”

“WITH MY PLANE!” Roland shouted.

“Well, Mister Rothman, technically it’s Miss Angelique’s plane,” Cookie ventured.

“I’ll kill them both! Break camp! We’re moving!” Roland instructed, then he heard a soft whispering coming from the west. He stopped and looked around. Out of the morning clear blue sky, the DC-3 came in low over the west dune, so low that when it passed the dune there was a cloud of billowing dust, swirling in its wake. Roland stood nailed to the spot.

The DC-3 tilted over on its left-wing and executed a hard turn to the north. It turned over the camp with a humming, whooshing sound, missing the Big Daddy Dune to the east with about 200 metres to spare. Then it went wings level towards Lüderitz. As the DC-3 climbed higher into the sky, Roland thought he saw the DC-3 wiggling its wings up and down, as if to say: “Goodbye.”

(Back to Angie and Ash.) We flew along at 2500 feet above mean sea level, following the coastline of the world-famous Skeleton Coast. With the deep blue Atlantic Ocean on the west of us and the rust-brown and tan desert sand of the Namib to the east, it was a picture of contrasts; water and desert, words that are not usually mentioned together.

The rolling waves of the Atlantic, restlessly driven by the winds onto the white beaches and black rocky outcrops, were azure blue with the white foam running in evenly spread lines, to just fizzle out along the shore. Here and there along the coast, little rocky islands could be seen, forever standing against the Atlantic.

We were running parallel to the shoreline. Now and then, Angie would point out something of interest along the shore, desert, or foaming sea.

“Can you see down below, about 400 metres inland from the sea?” she asked, leaning back in her seat to give me room to look out the right-side window. I unclipped my harness, moved my seat back, and stood halfway up, looking over Angie and out the right-side window.

“Yeah, looks like a shipwreck out in the desert. How did it end up there?” I asked stunned to find a huge ship 400 to 500 metres inland from the sea.

“That’s the Eduard Bohlen. A German cargo ship. On its way from Swakopmund to Table Bay and Cape Town, it ran aground in foggy weather on 5 September 1909. It seems to be stranded in the middle of the desert, but in fact, the desert sand is encroaching on the ocean, thus, it looks like it is stranded in the middle of the desert.” Giggle.

“My word. And it looks huge,” I said, moving back to my position and sitting down.

“Ninety-five metres, bow to stern, with a 12-metre beam. Gross registered tonnage of 2272 tonnes.

“You know, Angie, you can be a tour guide,” I said.

“Nah, more money in diamond mining,” she said, looking back at the departing sight of the shipwreck. “Anyway, there are two more wrecks near here,” Giggle. “But this one is world-famous due to its location, and more fun too.”

I shook my head. This girl astounds me with her general knowledge and witty ways. I refastened my harness and moved my seat back to where it was. Swakopmund is getting nearer, and soon I need to start the descent and landing checklists. I’ll have Angie read them to me.

“By the way, Angie, how are we going to get into your house in Swakop? You have the key, I suppose?”

Giggle. “Yes and no. Yes, I have a key, and no, I don’t have it with me. Wait, and I’ll show you a neat trick.”

“What? You’re a magician now?

“No, silly. I know where there’s a key hidden,” Angie said.

“Oh, brother!” I sighed.

The landing on runway 24 at Swakopmund was straightforward. Although it was a gravel runway, it was over 5400 feet long and thus more than enough space for the DC-3TP. The airport has no tower, so radio work on 126.3 was important. Traffic was non-existent, but still, announcing one’s intention and position had to be done to avoid noise abatement.

Noise abatement, you ask? Well yes, that noise you’ll make if you get hit in a mid-air collision! It is also not good for your health, or the health of the aircraft. So, radio work has to be done, even if nobody listens on the frequency.

Lucky the airport is manned during daylight hours and someone was listening, so I did get a short “No known traffic. The airport’s yours.” in a heavy German accent. I chuckled to myself.

“Why are you chuckling?” Angie asked.

“No. Never mind,” I said.

“No, spit it out. You did find something amusing.”

“Okay, but no offence,” I said.

“I’m listening...”

“During World War two, there was this incident where a German ship was in trouble near the British Islands. The German radio operator transmitted in a clear voice and English: ‘We are thinking. We are thinking! Please help!’ After transmitting the second time, a baffled Englishman answered: ‘What are you thinking about?’ Well, it turned out that the German ship was SINKING and not thinking!”

Giggle. “You do find we Germans speaking English, amusing, don’t you?”

“Sometimes, yes.”

“Okay, no offence taken. I’m just worried if the poor German ship was helped, at the end.”

“I wouldn’t know. The story did not say.”

“Poor guys...”

Well, here we are. Let’s get this dusty old girl down on terra firma,” I said.

Runway 24 has a go-cart racetrack to the east, just about north of the freeway interchange running parallel to the runway. The high red and white chequered painted water tower could be seen to the west. Otherwise, the ground was as flat as a pancake and full of dust. I could just imagine what the landing of the DC-3TP looked like to watchers on the ground. In full reverse thrust, dust clouds enveloped the aircraft, leaving only the green coloured nose seen poking out of the cloud of dust. Yes, awesome.

Angie and I left the DC-3 out on the apron. I was a little apprehensive about that, but there were no hangars available to rent. The hangars were in any case too small to accommodate the DC-3. I think the biggest aircraft to be hangared here was an old Beech King Air C90.

I also left instructions at the local FBO to refuel the aircraft with A1-jet. They assured me that it will be A1-jet, as this was their first DC-3 with turboprop engines, and therefore somewhat of an oddity.

Renting a car was somewhat of an operation. First, Angie was too young to rent a car. Drivers must be between 25 and 65. This brought a cloud to Angie’s face.