“It’s an inertial reel system,” Steve began, and got no further.
“I know what it is,” she told him, looking straight ahead. “We are wasting time.”
Carla Yavari, he hardly needed telling, was accustomed to her own way. Well not, he decided, in any airplane he flew. He signaled to the others he was ready to start. Viejo gave him the all-clear signal. The turbine ground into life, whined with its steady rising pitch. He watched the fuel pressure and flow and temperatures. She was alive. He signaled for them to pull the chocks and release the ropes. Again they signaled all clear, but remained by the wings as he ran through the quick checklist. They wouldn’t need to taxi much today. Not with this wind. He waved to the men to clear away from the airplane, watched the marker flags whipping in the wind. He went to full power, the prop a thin blur before them, kept the stick full back as he released the brakes. The Helio rumbled forward, the wings trembling as they bounced along the grass. Almost as quickly as they started rolling she was fighting to break free of the ground. He held the stick back hard, full elevator deflection, and suddenly they were in the air and he was fighting her in the savage chop barely a hundred feet off the plateau. They took off to the west; he decided to take advantage of the stiff winds and climb out at once to the north toward El Misti.
But even this short distance above the plateau the west wind they had on the surface vanished and the gales howled at them from the north. The left wing snapped down before a violent gust, and all in one moment the camera went flying from Carla’s hands, her body snapped forward—caught by the inertial harness before her face could hit the panel—and the Courier was blown violently to the south, following that dropped wing.
They were flying but they didn’t yet have the speed Steve needed to overcome the severity of the turbulence, and they were getting gust stalls that momentarily made the Helio shudder throughout its wings and fuselage. He heard a gasp from behind him as one of the two men was slammed against the side of the cabin. Steve had the nose down, not up as everyone else expected, and their speed picked up with a frightening rush as they combined their own speed over the ground with the winds that must have been sixty or seventy knots battering at them from out of the north.
Still, he needed more airspeed. There was a sickening view of the south edge of Chalhuanca Plateau, barely fifty feet beneath them, trees and grass and brush startlingly clear as they crossed the edge of the plateau and plunged toward the distant valley. It was the only way to move and Steve took it, wrestling the controls to keep the wings basically level until the airspeed indicator began to crawl around its dial. Before them the Sicuani River snaked through the valley, and he took it as his eyeball reference. By the time they reached that point, he’d have to break out of the plunging river of air in which they hurtled forward and—
The snaking ribbon through green reached toward them faster than he’d expected. He had just enough time to shout to them above the roar of the wind and the rattling and banging sounds of the airplane. “Hang on,” he yelled. “It’s going to be rough coming out of this.”
He glanced at Carla next to him. For the moment she’d given up trying to find the camera and was snugged against the backrest of her seat. A trickle of blood came from her lower lip.
He brought in full power and began the steady back-pressure on the stick to get them out. The nose came up, but they were still descending, and he had no choice but to bring the Helio into a turn; as much as he didn’t want to overload those wings at this moment, there really wasn’t any choice. He felt the Helio fighting, and this time he was better prepared for the sudden shift when they jerked free of the downdraft. The Helio shot upward as if hurled away from a catapult. He didn’t know how many g’s they pulled coming out of it as the airplane soared wildly—the rate-of-climb indicator hugging the stop on the dial—but it was bad enough to scrunch neckbones, and he knew the other people with him were being punished, especially those in the back seat. And then they were out of it, the air still choppy, smacking them with sudden jolts, but the kind of ride the Helio could move through reasonably well.
He took a deep breath and turned to Carla, worried about that blood he’d seen. He figured it was from biting her lip. As he looked at her, she motioned with her head to her father and Jennings in the back seat. Steve turned. Jennings was a pasty white, his eyes half-closed. “The oxygen,” Steve told her quickly. “Behind the front seats. Get masks on both of them.” When she had the masks secured he reached to the oxygen console overhead and gave them 100 percent flow. “Now yourself,” he said, “and one for me.” She did as she was told. Moments later they were all feeling considerably better. Steve reduced the flow to demand and decided to leave the masks in place.
Carla looked ahead, saw El Misti looming high into clouds that obscured the peak. Her voice came lightly muffled by the thin plastirubber mask. “Well,” she announced, “you warned us. I suppose one should apologize.”
His smile was hidden by the mask. “You’d better do something about your lip,” he told her, and saw the question in her eyes. “Your lip,” he repeated. “You must have bitten yourself.”
She felt with her hand beneath the mask, drew out her fingers with blood on them. “I didn’t know,” she said, barely loud enough for him to hear. She reached for a handkerchief in a pocket, dabbed, then gasped as a severe jolt slammed the Helio to one side.
Steve glanced behind, pointed ahead and down. “It gets rougher down there,” he told her. “Better find your camera.” She turned to her father and Jennings, who found the camera on the floor by their feet. They’d never noticed, during the sudden shocks after takeoff, that the camera had sailed back and dropped between them.
Steve flew northward. Their speed across the ground was barely fifty miles an hour, if that. From the rugged slopes of El Misti and the range bunched to each side of the volcano, a powerful river of air swirled across and downward to the valley over which they flew. Even beneath the thick clouds covering the upper peaks, Steve was able to make out violence of another and older nature well below them. Not even the thick forests could obscure the tumbling of the land, the great heaped blocks and piles tossed about by past quakes and volcanic eruption. Sheer walls fell away from gentle slopes, testifying to centuries past when this entire range must have suffered from the ubiquitous writhing of the earth. The dark remnants of old volcanic flow still covered many slopes. Steve found a strange familiarity between what he saw and the devastation in the country surrounding Flagstaff, Arizona, along the edge of the Painted Desert. Only this was on a far grander scale and the chaos strewn downward from the higher peaks had managed to contribute its own ugly brand.
He needed to get between El Misti and Temple Mountain to its south. Easier said than done. They had moments of quiet air, grateful for the release from the constant pounding against their bodies. Jennings had already been sick twice, doing his best to avoid bothering the pilot, but nausea and vomiting in an airplane flying a berserk pattern through air as rough as the worst river rapids could hardly be concealed. After the second time Steve announced he was returning to the plateau, but he held to his course after the vehement objection of Jennings. The scientist angrily reminded Steve that no one had complained, that to quit now after what they’d gone through might lose them this same chance for weeks to come—or forever.
“Okay,” he said, his tone masking his respect for Jennings and the others too. “I’ll keep this tin can in the air just so long as I think it’s safe. But the moment it gets too hairy for me, which is when I think we may start bending metal, we go back. With no arguments.” No one made any.
His only chance to get between El Misti and Temple Mountain was to get as low to the valley floor as was possible. A jumbled green carpet, thick and seemingly without bottom, loomed up at them as he dropped toward the valley jungle floor and wrestled with the controls. Carla gave up trying to take the pictures they wanted; she waited hopefully for a moment of calmer air. Steve wished her luck.
She went to work quickly with her camera as they rushed over the tumbled jungle below. Steve made it through the wide, deep gorge lying between Temple Mountain and the volcano and was starting his turn to the south when Dr. Yavari leaned forward and spoke in Spanish to his daughter. Steve caught only fragments, but noticed Carla glancing quickly from her father to him. “He wants you to retrace the route we just flew,” she said. “Can you, please?”
“What for?”
She tapped the camera. “From my side, Steve . . . I had to shoot across you for the pictures. There is something about Temple he wants to study later.” Her eyes stressed the need.
He brought up the nose, the Helio leaping high, then sucked her around in a stall-turn that let them reverse course with the smallest turn possible. He paid no attention to them now, concentrating on his flying, as Carla leaned closer to her window, snapping pictures under her father’s directions. Then they were out of the gorge, and fingers of turbulence were at them again.
“Now the south slope,” he heard Carla say. He held back saying what was in his mind. They flew to the east until the stepped eastern slope of Temple Mountain was to his right. He came around in a wide turn, letting the wind carry them in a swooping rush until he was again flying west, but this time with Temple Mountain to his and Carla’s right. Again the camera was busy. In the back seat Yavari had his face pressed against his window, ignoring the bumps of their flight, and Jennings was wedged in with him as both men pointed and exlaimed to one another.
“Wonderful,” Jennings was shouting in Yavari’s ear, pounding enthusiastically against his shoulder until another violent updraft weighed him heavily in his seat. Carla looked at him responsively. Steve didn’t know what was going on, but he did know he had three happy people with him. He’d find out soon enough on the ground, because they quickly lost their enthusiasm as he emerged from the protection of Temple Mountain and went staggering back into the violence they’d encountered right after takeoff.
If anything, it was worse now than when they’d first left the ground, and he knew it was going to take every ounce of skill he had to land. Bad enough in the air, but trying to bring this thing onto the ground without scattering it all over the plateau was another matter. He didn’t want to show his concern to the others, but they must have known—he saw Carla turning to the men behind her, checking that they were secured by their belts, then snugging her own straps.
He came around to the Chalhuanca Plateau in a wide and flat turn, letting the wind do most of the work. One bit of luck was still with them. This far down from the range they were again catching the wind no more than ten or twenty degrees off their nose. He at least wouldn’t have to fight a devilish crosswind. Ten or twenty degrees he could handle. It would have to be quick and dirty, no gentle approach . . . a carrier technique. Get down low, slam her onto the ground, stick back in his gut and hold her down with power until the people waiting for them ran up to the plane and grabbed on tight.
He couldn’t hold a decent approach. No way at all. He brought her around carefully, bringing in the first notch of flaps, trying to get her almost to walk on that surf-breaking air out there, but a draft sucked them downward and he was riding the power all the way, climbing back up that invisible slope, trying not let the ship get away from him.
They slugged—good word for it—closer and closer to the final moment. The sheer face of the edge of the plateau loomed outward at them, shimmering in their own vision as they were banged and jerked about within the airplane. Then it flowed together with a wild rush. He found it critical one moment to crab wildly to compensate for the sudden crosswind, then kick away from the crab when the wind was on his nose. Power surges to fight the winds up and down, and they were coming down hard toward that tiny strip. He saw the men watching as the tiny machine staggered down from the skies.
The grass loomed up at him. He flew her every inch of the way, snapping up a wing when wind slapped it down. They almost touched, swooped up, he brought her down, he had to commit. Then close again, he kept in the power on the edge of the stall, she was flying but sinking and he felt the tailwheel brush grass. Now. Forward on the stick, the gear coming in, back fast . . . hold her there, stick sucked back in his gut, plenty of power. Don’t do anything else yet, just hold her. The wings trembled and wanted to get away from the ground again. He felt the sudden thud as two men threw themselves over the fuselage near the tail to hold it down with their weight, and he saw Wayne by the left wing, threading a rope through the tiedown slot, Mueller doing the same to the right. Hanging onto the ropes, Wells now with Mueller, Viejo with Wayne, they crab-walked the ship back to the parking area and tied her down. Finally he was able to kill the engine.
They sat inside the airplane, no one wanting to speak. Then Steve heard a quiet prayer in Spanish from Yavari. The men outside opened the doors and helped them out, Carla holding tight to the camera containing her precious pictures. They were led to the C-47 and went inside the cabin.
Only Viejo was left to go inside the Courier and secure any loose items, tie the sticks down with the seat belts. When he came from the airplane he stood in front of Steve, looking strangely at him. “I must speak to you later.” Not another word. Not a question about the flight or what they might have found. Just that one sentence.
Steve turned to the Courier’s cabin and looked inside. Then he understood. The throttle by the left cabin wall, on the quadrant. The throttle handle, in the shape of a steel sphere, easy for the left hand of the pilot to grasp while he held the stick in his right. But where Steve had held the throttle there was now only mangled steel. He held up his left hand, looked at the palm, and for the first time saw the little pieces of broken and jagged metal driven into the plastiskin.
He hadn’t felt a thing.
Being that scared had overriden even bionics sensors.
How about that? In a way it was nice to be so scared. At least it was further proof he was more man than machine.
CHAPTER 14
“But there’s no mistake, I tell you. We’ve gone over everything, studied it from a hundred different angles. This is almost surely the key people have searched for . . . for God knows how many years!” Dr. Jennings drew in air, forcing himself to return to the level of calmness demanded by Rudy Wells, but his eyes were intense and the lines of his face taut as he presented his argument to Steve Austin and Colonel Simon Viejo. By his side in the big tent were Dr. Yavari and Carla. The others, Wayne and Mueller, listened as observers.
Jennings’ forefinger stabbed again at the chart. “Even when it was just a hint we were on the right track, although we didn’t realize it. Then when we studied the magnetic heading of the crossroads, and the angle of structure of Temple Mountain . . .” He sat back, glancing at Wells, expecting the warning he knew he deserved. But Rudy was silent, Jennings was learning how to pace himself and his body was adapting well to the thin air.
Carla leaned forward to reach the map. “What Dr. Jennings and my father are trying to convince you of,” she said, “is that all we have seen points to Temple Mountain as our goal. You see”—she spread out the photographs—“Dr. Jennings first suspected that the Caya built their roadway structures along the cardinal points of the compass. If the crossroad is any indication, then his suspicions are certainly founded. If we take into consideration alterations in the magnetic field locally because of volcanic activity . . .”
Her intensity filled the tent; she commanded the moment. Her father nodded as she went through each point, was content to let her be his spokesman. It had become obvious to everyone that Yavari and his daught
er had worked as a team so closely knit that each knew the other’s thoughts.
“Do you understand, then?” she said to Viejo. “We must get to Temple Mountain. As quickly as possible. Everything we have seen, everything we have studied and examined points to Temple Mountain. It is our . . .”
“Lodestone?” Steve offered.
“Exactly.” She smiled at Steve in appreciation.
The sound of the wind crowded into the tent with them. They were bundled in cold-weather clothing, and grateful for the heat from the two propane lamps glowing brightly on each side of the tent. The sides and roof of the tent billowed and sang from the outside pressures. It was as if they had been cut off from the rest of the world, prey for the siren call that Carla was bringing them with the image of Temple Mountain and its promise.
Colonel Viejo was an old hand at resisting siren calls. He knew the treachery of the back mountain country, remembered the men who had failed to come back from what they had rushed into so enthusiastically. “You wish to go to Temple Mountain?”
“Wish? We must go there,” Carla said. “Everything we have learned points to it.”
Viejo waved a hand to cut short the onslaught. “How do you propose we get from here, on this plateau, to there?”
“Why, the same way we got here, of course,” Dr. Jennings said. “The way Steve and the others brought in our plane. They flew over the plateau, dropped in by parachute and . . .”
Steve shook his head. “The wind, Dr. Jennings. Anybody who bailed out into this wind wouldn’t have a prayer of making it safely to the ground. Not with those rocks out there.”
“Besides,” Wayne added, “there isn’t enough room for a strip. Maybe for the Helio, but you’d have to work at it awhile. Weeks, maybe.”
“The weather,” Dr. Yavari said with hope in his voice. “Maybe the weather will improve soon?”
“Do not count on it, doctor,” Viejo said. “We are coming into September. You know what happens. The clouds are here most of the time, but the wind is here all the time. Worse in the months to come. Forget wings and parachutes.”
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