June 2008

When a bullet hits a pilot in mid-air, who will land the plane?

It was a late Friday afternoon in April. Clay Center, Kansas, population 4600, a town with only five traffic lights. Folks heading home after work. The sun still hanging warm and gold over young wheat fields, the light fading towards sunset.

County Sheriff Chuck Dunn was sitting in his patrol car when he saw Michael Michaud in an old pickup truck that had been painted an odd silver colour. The truck did a slow turn down the street in front of him. Michaud, 28, a solidly built man of 104 kilograms, had a criminal record and various drug-related arrests. Dunn guessed the routine part of the evening might be over. He radioed for a check of the vehicle and the licence plate: they didn't match.

Dunn's friend Mike Spicer was just arriving home. Tall and trim, Spicer was the manager of the local airport. Taught to fly by his father, he had piloted aeroplanes since he was a kid, once blowing the window out of a plane while doing aerobatics. Spicer, a county commissioner, and his wife, Pam, were to attend the annual Clay Center Presbyterian Manor fair, benefiting the Manor's senior-citizen residents. Pam was already dressed, but Spicer had worked late and hadn't changed out of his work pants, hooded sweatshirt or the black baseball cap marked with the letters API (Aircraft Parts International) that he always wore. There wasn't much time to get ready.

Chuck Dunn rolled his police car in behind Michaud's truck. He was not too concerned. Michaud was a familiar character in town, erratic, but not particularly dangerous. This was just an illegal plate. Routine trouble.

Dunn flicked on his lights and siren.

The silver pickup didn't stop. It kept moving through traffic out of town. When it hit the city limits, the truck rocketed forward, heading south. Dunn followed, the vehicles whipping down a narrow country road. After a couple of kilometres, the pickup veered east into a hard turn, careened through a gap in the fencing and bounced out into a rolling field of wheat, jumping over terraces, ripping through electric fences. Dunn stopped his patrol car. He wasn't going to risk his vehicle over a licence plate. He called for backup to help corner the suspect.

In the air in minutes
And he called for his secret weapon: Mike Spicer and his plane. In the flat, open countryside, everything would be visible from the air. Mike was not part of the law enforcement team, but he was a friend and Dunn knew he would help.

Spicer's phone rang. It was the sheriff's dispatcher asking if he could take his Cessna up and help Sheriff Dunn locate a fleeing suspect. Seven local officers were already searching on the ground and more were on the way. Spicer hadn't even taken off his cap yet. He looked at the antique clock on the wall. The brass hand pointed to 5.32pm. Dinner at the Manor was at 6pm. But Spicer didn't hesitate. He could see the airport from his house. He could be in the air in minutes.

Only 15 planes tie down at the Clay Center Municipal Airport, one of them Spicer's small Cessna 150. Now he had it warming up off the airport's single runway. Just before take-off, his cellphone rang.

It was Arnie Knoettgen, the mayor of nearby Morganville, who doubles as a reserve county deputy. He had heard Sheriff Dunn's call for air assistance on the radio and volunteered to ride along with Spicer as a spotter. He told Spicer to wait for him. He was on his way. Moments later, still carrying his police radio, Knoettgen wedged himself into the passenger seat of the cramped cockpit. The men sat shoulder to shoulder. Spicer taxied out, put the plane in the air and flew south.

In no time, they were soaring over young green wheat fields and thick, dark rows of trees, heading towards the coordinates they'd been given. On the ground they saw police vehicles scouring back-country roads. This must be the spot.

Spicer pulled the bill of his API cap low over his eyes to shield out the rays of the setting sun. "We'll make our first pass right down the middle," he said. "I have the truck straight ahead," Knoettgen replied.

The silver pickup was in a small ravine directly below, its door hanging open. It might have been missed at ground level, but not from the air. Knoettgen radioed the sheriff, and Dunn, now on foot, began moving towards the pickup alone.

Assuming the truck was abandoned, Spicer widened the search. Flying along a line of trees at the edge of the field, he saw what looked like a wind-blown yellow feed sack between the rows of green wheat.

"I want to look at something," he told Knoettgen.
Spicer turned the plane and, with a second glance, realised the sack was a man lying facedown in the wheat. It's him, Spicer thought.
"Tell them I'll put the wingtip on him and point him out." Then, banking the plane sharply, Spicer dipped his right wingtip towards a spot in the field some 90 metres below.
Knoettgen again radioed the sheriff. And Dunn watched the sweep of the steeply banking plane to reconnoitre, then took off jogging across the field.

A dangerous situation
Spicer was on his fourth pass over the suspect in another steep right turn, wing pointed to the ground. A plane at such an altitude is particularly vulnerable. At low altitude, there's no room for pilot error. If the pilot fails to keep control, the plane will lose lift and fall out of the sky.

It was at that moment, according to Sheriff Dunn, that Michael Michaud, lying in the wheat field, must have rolled over, raised a large-calibre handgun and fired at the plane.

It's almost impossible for anyone but a skilled marksman to hit a moving target at a distance with a handgun. And this target was a bird in the air a block away, high in the Kansas sky. By an extraordinary fluke, the bullet struck the plane.

Knoettgen neither heard nor felt the bullet explode through the window just inches from his head. He was untouched. But the lead slug blew Plexiglas shards across the cockpit and into Spicer's face. The bullet struck him above his left eye, splitting the bill and sweatband of his cap, knocking it off his head. It sliced a 15-centimetre gash across his forehead, ripped off pieces of flesh, which stuck to the plane's ceiling, and then blasted out through the pilot's window with a loud crack.

Spicer heard the "crack," but had no idea he had been hit.
I've blown out another window, is what he thought. He turned his head to the left. The window was still there, and Spicer was looking straight into a bullet hole. That's when he lost sight in his left eye. Blood cascaded down his face, blinding him. His hand flew to his head. There was so much blood that it covered his glasses, soaked his sweatshirt. Spicer felt nothing. Just a strange tumble of memories and the sense that if it was his time to die, he was ready.

But Knoettgen wasn't a pilot. If Spicer lost consciousness, his friend would die. Spicer forced his mind back to the cockpit. "Arnie, I'm hit."

Emergency landing
Knoettgen yelled into the radio that Mike was shot; then he heard two more blasts – and grabbed the yoke. In Spicer's little cessna, the control yoke, or wheel, protrudes directly from the instrument panel practically into the pilot's lap. Pushed forward, the plane descends. If Spicer passed out, his weight dropping onto the yoke would send the plane down. Spicer cinched his harness as tightly as he could. And Knoettgen held firmly to the controls.

Like the yoke, the throttle – a rod with a black ball handle – protrudes from the control panel. Pulling the throttle outward reduces power. Spicer tried to find it; as everything blurred, he shoved it "to the wall" – all the way in, pushing the plane to its limit.

In the waning evening light, the Cessna gathered speed. The two men, working together, turned back in the direction of the airport.

Out of the corner of his eye, Knoettgen watched Spicer's head nodding forward as he wiped the blood from his face with his sweatshirt.

How far could they be from the airport? Six, seven kilometres at most. Knoettgen kept his hand on the yoke as Spicer gritted out instructions.

Then, glancing up, Knoettgen recognised the clean asphalt strip cutting across the landscape. The Cessna roared towards the runway at full throttle. The engine shook the cockpit.

On the ground, friends had heard the report on the police radio and came streaming to the airport. Police cars and ambulances were there. Spicer's friend, Howard Van Dyke, charged up in a fire truck.

Normally, in the process of landing, a pilot does a "downwind leg", flying with the wind parallel to the runway. Then he does a "base leg", turning left across the wind and heading towards the runway. As the plane nears, it turns left again, into the wind, and begins its final approach – lining up, slowing down and dropping towards the strip.

Spicer and Knoettgen didn't have time for any of this. Hands together on the yoke, they took an angle that would lead them straight at the end of the runway. Spicer pulled out the throttle and the plane began to drop.

They were 30 metres off the ground – airspeed good, altitude good – the rock-hard runway directly ahead, the plane dropping quickly. Knoettgen held a hand on Spicer's head trying to keep the blood out of his eyes and talked him down as the wheels came closer and closer to the ground. Spicer worked the controls. Together, they made one whole pilot.

The plane came in low and straight – and hit the ground, rolling fast. They were on the runway. Knoettgen looked at his old friend, so tightly strapped into the harness that he could hardly move. "Stop it here," Knoettgen said. And Spicer did.

Moments later, Spicer was loaded into an ambulance. As the vehicle took off with lights flashing, he checked the time. It was 6.02 pm, only 30 minutes after he'd glanced at the clock in his house.

At the hospital, his X-ray technician was a man he'd taught to fly some years before. His trauma surgeon, Duncan Davis, was a neighbour. The doctor picked Plexiglas shards out of Spicer's face and worked on the 15-centimetre gash across his forehead. The bullet had not impacted bone; otherwise his skull might have shattered. Except for a scar, there would be no permanent damage.

Police captured Michael Michaud hiding in a garden shed. He has been indicted by a federal grand jury on six felony charges and is undergoing psychiatric evaluation.

Crime photos were taken of the plane, and the following day Howard Van Dyke went to check it out. Lying in the luggage area behind the cockpit was a black cap, its bill broken, its sweatband split in front by the bullet. Van Dyke shook his head when he saw the cap. The width of a sweatband: the distance between life and death.