by Todd Borg
“That wouldn’t be good,” I said.
“So this placement on this ski run could be ideal. Once we get into the air, if we stay on this side of the mountain, we won’t have to deal with a sudden downdraft. But we need some kind of wind.”
“Okay, what can I do to help while we wait?”
“First, we pull out the canopy.” Vince unsnapped some reinforcement straps on the glider pack and then opened a zipper that was shaped like a large U. The front flap of the pack opened up. Vince pulled out some fabric, feeling it in the dark. He slid his hand along, found what he was looking for, and handed a bundle of fabric to me. “Here, hold this. This is the left tip of the canopy. Keep a good grip on it while I stretch out the glider.”
“Will do,” I said.
Vince pulled the glider out and walked across the slope with it. It was so dark it was obvious he was working by feel. He felt with both hands, letting the fabric slip through his fingers, occasionally stopping to reassess what he was feeling and shift the fabric. Every few feet, he arranged some of the thin lines and oriented them down the slope from the fabric canopy. Eventually he set the other end of the canopy on the ground. He was far enough away that I couldn’t see or tell what he was doing.
After a minute, he spoke from the other side of the glider. “I’ve weighted down the right wing tip. You can put yours on the ground and stand on it so it doesn’t move as I shape the layout of the glider.”
“Got it,” I called out. Although, as I set the left wing tip down and stood on it, it seemed that the fabric was grinding onto rocks. I tried not to put too much weight on it. The glider had to work perfectly. I didn’t want us hanging from fraying fabric.
I couldn’t see Vince in the dark, but I heard him as he moved across the dark slope. Eventually, I figured out he was arranging the glider in a large arc. At one point, as he moved toward what must have been the top of the curve, he was silhouetted against the sky beyond. From his position relative to mine, I saw for the first time just how big the glider was.
“Vince, we may have a problem.”
“Hold that thought. I’m coming down.”
Backlit by the stars and Milky Way, Vince stepped his way down the ski slope as if he were marching sideways down a long staircase. “What’s the problem?” he said as he came near.
“I didn’t realize how big the paraglider is.”
“Yeah. It needs to be big to fly two of us. What’s wrong with that?”
“I thought we’d be able to glide right into the yard to the side of the lodge. But now I’m thinking no way.”
Vince was silent a moment. “Then we’ll just have to punch a landing, whether the canopy gets hung up or not. I’ll try to make it so you and I hit the yard. The canopy will hit whatever it hits. Trees or fence or whatever.”
“Give me a worst-case scenario.”
Vince didn’t hesitate. “The canopy snags in the trees, branches rip the canopy fabric, and we fall to the rocks below and die.”
“Break it to me gently,” I said.
“That would be hanging from the lines in the dark and getting - what - shot down by the bad guys?”
“Got it,” I said.
“Gentler still would be that we can’t get enough altitude to make our target. So we have to put down some distance below the lodge. If that happens, I’ll have to take whatever area looks open and out of the trees.”
“In the dark.”
“In the dark,” he repeated.
“Assuming we get some wind and get enough altitude, it’s still going to be difficult to find the lodge in the dark. The stars don’t provide any light to speak of.”
“Actually, even the starlight is helpful. More helpful are the lights at houses and road intersections down below. I can read our location from those lights. I studied my topo maps before we left. As long as we don’t get any cloud formation, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find the lodge. Your idea of finding Twin Peaks and then working down the ridge from that point should work.”
Vince turned around, checking the layout of the canopy.
“While we’re waiting,” he said, “I’ll go over what we’re going to do. I’ve got the glider canopy sitting in an arch shape across the ski run.” He pointed to a group of straps and gear that sat on the ground downslope from the canopy. “This is the tandem harness. I’ll be in the rear position, while you’ll be in front. The harness has loop straps that go around your thighs, a seat of sorts, and straps for your shoulders. While you’re standing, the harness feels a bit awkward. But once we’re in the air, it will feel like a comfortable seat.”
Vince reached down to the ground just up from the harness. “These lines gather together in these bundles called risers. The lines go up to various points on the canopy. Some lines are merely for support. Others that connect to the trailing edge of the wing are designed to be pulled, which bends different parts of the canopy. Depending on where the lines are attached to the canopy, pulling some of them causes the canopy to turn. Others block some tubes causing the glider to lose lift. Pulling those lines is like putting on the brakes, and they make the glider lose altitude faster than normal.”
“What do you mean when you refer to tubes?”
“Come up to the canopy, and I’ll show you.”
We hiked up the slope, walking to the outside of the canopy’s width so we didn’t tread on the lines. Vince reached down and picked up the edge of the canopy fabric. “The entire canopy is made of fabric tubes. They run the short dimension, from the leading edge of the canopy to the trailing edge. You probably can’t see it in the dark, but feel these openings at the front of the tubes? What happens is that as the glider flies, the air going into the tubes creates pressure keeping the canopy in the proper shape. It’s a ram air design that creates and maintains the wing shape of the canopy.”
“So that’s a critical aspect to the design,” I said. “Always keeping those tubes filled with air. It sounds quite sophisticated. This isn’t just a big kite.”
“It’s very sophisticated. Computer designed. There are lots of different models. Some go faster, some have better glide ratios. Some allow for very steep banking so a pilot can make tight circles and stay within a narrow thermal updraft. And of course, some, like this tandem, are good for taking up passengers.”
“It seems like the paraglider design is inherently very safe. It’s like a parachute, right? So if something happens, you can still glide down to the ground. Or am I wrong about that?”
“They are very safe. Even so, we go up with a reserve parachute. Come down and look at the harness.”
We hiked back down to the harness. He picked up the left side and a pack that was attached to it. “To the left of my seat is the reserve chute. If something very unusual were to happen to made our glider unflyable, I can pull this reserve chute and we’d drift to the ground on that.”
“And, like most parachutes, it won’t be as maneuverable as a paraglider, right?”
“Correct,” Vince said. “But in all of my six hundred flights, I’ve never even come close to having to pull the reserve.”
“Have you ever done a flight like this? In the mountains, on a moonless night, with little wind, and an unlit target?”
“No. This is new territory. But I’m willing to try it to save my boy. I understand if you don’t want to go. He’s not your kid. If you want, I can give you the keys to my truck. I can call you when I’m in the air. You could be at the gate with your friend Diamond.”
“No, I’m in. I want to be there. Two of us surprising three or maybe more men is much preferable to one person. Speaking of risk, I want to remind you that, the moment we land, we might both get shot to death. It’s not too late to back out of this plan and call the cops.”
“No. Absolutely not. I’ve met these guys. They’re psycho. I have no doubt they’ll kill Jon if we call the cops. I’m worried enough just having your cop friend Diamond along even if he’s out of uniform. What if one of these guys recogn
izes him? We have to get them first.”
“Okay. Back to how we launch? Specifically, is there anything I need to do?”
“Yeah. As soon as we start to feel a breeze coming up, we’ll get into the harness. So step your legs through these leg loops.”
He held them out, I felt in the dark until I had my hands on the straps, then stepped through.
“Now pull the straps to tighten them.”
I did as he said.
“Now, arms into the shoulder harness. At the front of the harness is a strap across your chest. Feel it?”
“Yeah.”
“Tighten the chest strap just enough to keep the shoulder straps from coming off your shoulders.”
“Like the chest strap on some backpacks,” I said.
“Yes, exactly.”
“Okay. I’m in the harness. Now walk me through the launch.”
“When we’re both in the harness, you will face down the slope, and I’ll be behind you. If the breeze is slight, I’ll lift the risers and lines a bit and give them a shake. The breeze will blow into the tubes and the glider will inflate and rise behind us. After it’s above us, I’ll tell you we’re going to launch. Together, we walk or jog forward down the slope. As the glider rises above us, it’ll lift us off the ground.”
“You said this is how we do it if the breeze is slight. So far it doesn’t look as if there’ll be any breeze at all. But let’s just say the wind comes on strong. Then what?”
“Same as before, except I turn around and face up the hill. I need to do that to make certain I have good control over the glider as it rises. Either way, you stay facing forward.”
“The glider could pull hard and fast, right?”
Vince nodded, his head movement barely visible in the dark. “Remember, this baby can lift us and more. Probably five hundred fifty pounds, easy. Maybe six hundred. So as it jumps up into the air, it will want to lift us fast and pull us up the slope. I’ll be fighting the pull. But you may find yourself jerked backward a few steps. Once I’ve got the glider positioned, I’ll turn around to face forward like you. We probably won’t be able to take more than one step forward before we’re lifted up.”
“Then what should I do?”
“Once you’re sitting in the harness, you’ll probably want to adjust the seat and the straps on your thighs. This harness tends to give a guy crotch crunch. But a bit of tugging here and there will make things more comfortable. After that, you just sit back and enjoy the ride.”
“Let’s say we get a decent breeze,” I said. “Rough ETA at the lodge?”
“My earlier estimate of a ten-minute ride was simply to traverse the distance. But first we need to climb to eleven thousand feet if possible. Or as high as possible if we can’t go all the way. So most of our time will be spent climbing. But if we have a slow breeze, we may not find enough uplift to climb at any rate. In that case, we won’t get there. The middle ground would be an intermittent wind, able to climb now and then, but very slowly. If that happens it could be hours to get there. But if it looks like we’ll arrive any time after dawn, we should call it off, right?”
I thought about it. “Yeah. We want to come in under cover of darkness. The best time for any raid is around three-thirty or four a.m. The studies on circadian rhythm show that’s when people are least alert, even if they’re awake. Are these guys younger than you, or older?”
“Younger. About thirty. Why?”
“That’s good. Most guys in their thirties sleep better than older guys. We don’t want any insomniacs watching the night sky as we come in.”
CHAPTER FORTY
We waited in silence for a few minutes. Vince kept looking at the sky.
“The moon will set in another fifteen minutes,” Vince said. “And there’s still no wind.”
“This requires the patience of a stakeout,” I said.
“When you were a cop, did you deal with a lot of real bad guys?” he asked. “I mean the kind of guys who don’t value life at all?”
“Yeah. I imagine most cops see the dark stuff. Big city cops more than most, I suppose.”
“How do you know when you meet one of them? Like maybe you’re bringing in a suspect for questioning. Is there a way you can judge if he’s one of the really twisted ones?”
“Hard to tell,” I said. “The true psychopaths can be good actors. I’ve seen some of them spin their psyche eval so well that they convince the police shrink they were merely in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong friends. Twice, we caught murderers who’d previously been through our system as suspects and been let go after it had been decided they were low risk. But I’ve noticed one semi-common characteristic of men who don’t value life. Not every last one of them has it, but way more of them have it than what you see in the general population.”
“What is it?”
“I think you mentioned it before,” I said. “Dead eyes.”
“How would you describe dead eyes?”
I thought about it. “No sparkle, no excitement, no worry, no fear, no empathy for others.”
“No life,” Vince said.
“Right.”
Vince looked again toward the dark sky. “The cirrus clouds are gone. The lenticular cloud over Heavenly seems to be dissipating. We may as well settle in. It could be a long wait. Maybe we won’t get any wind at all.” Vince bent over and felt the ground. “A bit moist with condensation, but not too wet to sit.” He found a spot and sat down. The slope was steep enough that his feet were down below him. He rested his elbows on bent knees.
I sat nearby.
“What’s this going to be like?” Vince said. “I’ve never even known a cop. So I have no idea what happens when you bust in on bad guys. Is there anything about it that’s predictable?”
“Not a lot. We know they’re highly motivated to go to all this trouble. Which means, they’ll do whatever it takes to prevent us from disrupting their plan. We also know they felt no remorse about their mate who died on Job’s Sister. That doesn’t mean they’ll immediately shoot, if only because gunshots draw attention. It’s more likely they’ll try to silence us with their knives. Or a baseball bat.” I also thought they seemed like the kind of guys who would use their fists. But I didn’t say it because it might give Vince a false sense of security, thinking he could hold his own with his fists.
“Does a guy - you know - tend to freeze up in a situation like this?”
“Some do. You won’t because you’ll be focused on getting your child out of the lodge.”
Vince was quiet.
“How’d you meet Brie?” I said, more to pass the time than anything else.
“I met her on an adventuring trip put on by REI.”
“What does that mean, adventuring?”
“I suppose it’s a new word. It refers to going out on adventures that give people new experiences and help them build self confidence. REI puts on lots of different kinds of trips. Skiing. Hiking. Kayaking. In the past, they had me guide mountain hiking trips. One day the coordinator at the Reno store called me up and said she was putting together an adventuring trip to focus on Tahoe. She wondered if I could come up with a range of physical, outdoor activities for people who hadn’t done much outdoor stuff. Her thought was, if people got outside of their comfort zone and did something they never thought they’d ever do, it would build self confidence. She said the trip would be open to anyone. But she also said she thought most of the people who would sign up would be women.
“Anyway, my first thought was to take them paragliding. But the woman said that was too far out of the comfort zone she envisioned. So we settled on things like bouldering and downhill mountain biking.”
“Was this a multi-day thing?”
“Yeah, seven days. A different activity each day.
“Did Brie like the adventure?”
“Mostly, yes. She especially liked ziplining.”
“Where you hang from a pulley and ride down a long cable,” I said.
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br /> “Yeah. At first, she said no way was she going to risk her life flying down a skinny little cable. But after some of the other women went and said it was such great fun, she tried it. She loved it. Not only did she find it really fun, she said it proved to herself she could enjoy doing things she was originally afraid of.”
“She seems like a good woman, quiet and thoughtful.”
“She is,” Vince said. “Best of all, Jon really likes her. They’ve gotten to be quite close. The only discomfort I have is that it often feels like Brie is hiding something.”
“Any idea what?”
“No.”
“What about Jon’s mother?” I said.
“Victoria has always been a flashy woman - what’s the word - charisma like an actress. Lots of guys were envious of me when she took up with me. She’s trim and is proud of her physicality. Really vain, to tell the truth. But Victoria isn’t anything like what you’d think of as a devoted mother or wife. She’s self-focused. Everything is always about herself. She never thinks about other people. She treated me like I was a drag on her life. The same for how she thinks about Jon.
“She always said how much she wanted to have a kid. I got the message that having a kid would make for a lot more excitement than her boring marriage with me. But later I began to think that her desire for a kid was just so she’d have someone totally devoted to her. A kid was just a way to make her feel more important.
“But before she had a kid, she ran away. Later, I found out she was pregnant when she left. She’d always talked about how terrible it would be to have your belly get stretched out. I think she couldn’t face the idea that other people would no longer see her as the young, beautiful, party girl, always up for a good time. Being stuck at home with a baby and all the related stress was not something Victoria had ever thought about.”
“When did you find out she’d gotten pregnant?”
“After Jon was born! I knew she’d always been impulsive, but this was extreme. She just left me one day. I found a note saying she had to do some soul searching about her future. Then she showed up about nine months later with a baby. ‘This is your boy!’ she told me, all excited. And when I didn’t immediately act all happy, she thought I was a lousy person, like I didn’t have what it took to be a father.