The Cannibal Queen by Stephen Coonts Read Free Book Online Page A

three or four miles to the northeast. So I was flying parallel to the airway but offset to the left, the north, in poor visibility. If the visibility had been just a little worse I would have completely missed seeing D’Arbonne.
    I am learning. I tell myself it’s just a matter of shifting gears, getting used to 82 knots and all this haze. And timing the legs.
    Oh well, it’s an adventure. And that’s why I came.

4
    T HURSDAY MORNING AT THE H OLIDAY I NN IN W EST M ONROE , Louisiana, I stand looking at thick fog. Just to the southwest of the motel is a television tower that the chart says is 518 feet tall. The top is obscured. When I went to the restaurant at seven it was thicker than it is now, at 8:30 A.M. , so the fog is slowly lifting. That is cheering.
    David folded last night at 9 P.M. and is still sleeping eleven and a half hours later. The night before at Fountainhead Lodge in Oklahoma he watched Dances With Wolves until 9:30, then sat and watched me write until 11. Then he read what I had written and went cheerfully to bed at 11:30.
    With the lights out the fun began. He crept from the bed and jumped me. Tickle, tickle, tickle. The horseplay subsided at midnight, but I got him up at 7. Even with his naps in the Stearman, he crashed last night at 9 after watching a half-hour television special and indulging in a short tickle session.
    I have this sneaking suspicion that he isn’t really as ticklish as he wants me to believe. His feet aren’t ticklish at all. He doesn’t even wiggle when you work on the soles of his feet with a finger; never has.
    He is fourteen years old, five feet six and a half inches tall, 120 pounds. He shaves now about once a week. Very mature in many ways, but he still likes to roughhouse. He is a natural gentleman, always considerate of others, and has an inquiring mind. I suspect that he is the smartest person in the family. I know he is brighter than I am.
    He grins a lot, unashamedly displaying his braces and their green rubber bands. I asked him, Why green? Because the last ones were black and he felt like a different color.
    When he wakes up I will phone Flight Service and get a weather brief. I suspect this fog won’t lift enough to be flyable until noon at the earliest. So we are in no hurry. Last night we decided to fly down to New Orleans today and spend at least a full day sightseeing—maybe ride a riverboat on the Mississippi and wander around in the French Quarter, America’s tackiest tourist trap.
    The quirk in the American psyche that draws people to places like the French Quarter also makes them pull off 1-70 in Oakley, Kansas, and pay real money to see the world’s largest prairie dog and a cow with five legs. Not that I have yet visited the hottest tourist draw in Oakley, Kansas, but I’ll admit, I am curious. I have never seen a 250-pound prairie dog and the sight just might be worth five dollars.
    David is waking up now. He looks around, then burrows back under the covers. Now he is examining the sheet situation. His lower one got pulled down and wadded up. He gives up. He flops back and closes his eyes. Another half hour of morning snoozing seems to be in the works. Nope, his eyes are open. He has just logged twelve straight hours of Zs.
    I go outside and check the TV tower. The clouds are just above the top of it. Here and there patches of blue are visible. In a little while we can fly.
    It is just 11:10 A.M. on my watch when I add power and push the stick forward to lift the tail. The field elevation here at Monroe, Louisiana, is only 79 feet above sea level but I am still surprised when the manifold pressure needle steadies at 29 inches. We are only losing one inch of pressure in the manifold system, which strikes me as excellent for a normally aspirated engine. That thought is worth a smile, and one spreads across my face.
    The plane accelerates well with the tail up and I pull her off and let her climb at 80 MPH, which is still a nice angle in this thick