Risking a glance, Robson saw Kurt bracing himself. “Turn,” Robson ordered.
The pilot began a turn and then straightened up. Robson looked down and saw that Kurt was still in the basket.
“Harder,” Robson ordered. “Circles. He can’t hang on forever.”
* * *
—
Kurt had wedged himself into the rescue basket. He had one hand on its frame and the other holding his Colt. His feet were jammed into the corners of the stretcher. He knew what the pilot was trying to do. But aside from shooting at the pilot’s seat and trying to kill him or putting a few bullets into the engine or fuel tank, there was little Kurt could do to stop it.
He held tight as the helicopter sharply banked into a turn. The basket swung wide and then swung back. When that maneuver didn’t shake Kurt, the pilot transitioned to a circular pattern. This had two advantages, neither one in Kurt’s favor.
First, by flying in circles the swaying that threatened to pull the helicopter off course was eliminated. Once it began moving in a circle, it felt like nothing more than a merry-go-round, the stretcher acting as a counterweight. The ride was surprisingly smooth, the sensation of speed shockingly apparent.
The second issue—and the more disastrous one from Kurt’s point of view—was that the circular pattern created an ever-increasing level of centrifugal force, one that would soon fling him off the gurney. Not only was there a limit to human strength countering such a force, the circling was also causing the blood to drain from Kurt’s head, arms and hands. Even if he held on, he would eventually black out, like a fighter pilot pulling too many g’s. At that point, he’d go over the edge like a rag doll, never even see the end coming.
With the strain building rapidly, Kurt needed to do something and do it fast.
Tightening his grip on the Colt, he aimed upward, thinking he might hit the cable or damage the helicopter enough that they would have to land, but as he extended his arm the gun grew heavier, wavered back and forth, soon feeling like a seventy-pound weight.
As he fought to stabilize his aim, the pilot tightened the turn further. Kurt’s arm fell to the side and the g-force ripped the gun from his hand.
Kurt brought his hand back down and grabbed the frame of the stretcher.
The helicopter continued to circle, the turns getting ever tighter. Kurt began to feel dizzy. His heart was pounding, his arms shaking, his mind turning foggy.
With his vision fading, Kurt reached for the duffel bag. Feeling across its thick canvas, he found the first strap. He pulled it free from its buckle and then grabbed for the second strap.
Finding it, he tried to lift the lip of its buckle, but the thing wouldn’t budge. Either it was stuck or his arm had grown too weak. He shifted his weight and lifted harder. This second effort moved it, but Kurt was close to losing consciousness by now. Everything was turning gray and beginning to go dark.
Kurt gripped his legs together and tightened his abs, trying to force the blood back into his head. His vision briefly returned to normal. He watched the ground flying past. It was no more than twenty feet below him. Sand and rocks rushed by, then trees and greenery, then finally dark water glistening in the early evening sun as they sped over one of the small lakes.
The pattern repeated itself as the circles tightened even more. Sand, rock, trees and greenery, water—everything passing in one giant, dizzying blur.
With his vision and strength partially restored, Kurt pulled up on the second buckle again. This time it unlatched.
The strap flailed in the wind and the duffel bag slid a few inches. But with its entire weight now straining against the single third strap, the tension grew tighter.
Kurt pulled hard but found it wouldn’t budge.
The pilot banked the helicopter into a yet tighter turn.
Kurt primed himself for one last effort. He grabbed for the buckle and pulled. His hand slipped free. With the g-forces so high, he was unable to catch himself. His feet broke loose and his body came halfway out of the basket. His free hand found the duffel’s fluttering strap and gripped it. It kept him from being ejected, but he was now holding on by his hands only, his legs were over the side of the stretcher and there was simply no way to overcome the centrifugal force and pull them back in.
His arms burned as he held on. Down below, the rocks now flew past. Now the sand. Now the trees. They were flying in one last circle and Kurt knew what came next.
He let go, flew through the air and plunged feetfirst into the center of the small lake.
Chapter 38
Kurt hit the lake at high speed. He plunged through the surface, spreading his arms wide, slowing his descent into the water as much as possible. He still hit the muddy bottom with enough force to embed his boots in its sediment.
Shockingly calm for someone who’d just been thrown from a moving helicopter, Kurt looked up. The murky water cut down on the light and, without a mask or goggles, the view was blurred, but the surface shimmered no more than twenty feet above him.
He saw no movement, no bubble trails announcing the presence of bullets fired into the water to finish him off. He saw only ripples from his own entry and the color of the evening sky in a circle beyond.
Reaching down, he dug the mud away from his boots, kicked free and swam for the surface. He emerged cautiously and savored exhaling and taking a breath of air.
Looking around, he spotted the helicopter disappearing to the south. Rather than come back to make sure he was dead, they’d chosen to hightail it out of the valley. Kurt wasn’t surprised. Doubling back was just asking for trouble. Their best bet was to reel in the duffel bag or land somewhere safe and haul it aboard by hand. Either way, the helicopter was gone—along with the Writings of Qsn.
At least Kurt still had his life.
He swam to shore, crawled out and found a rock to sit on. He was wringing out his socks when Gamay and Paul came along on their horses, trailing a spare along with them.
Both were obviously relieved to see him. Gamay made the first joke to lighten the mood. “An odd time to take a bath,” she said, “but I hear the waters around here are healing.”
“Lifesaving,” Kurt replied.
Gamay led the extra horse over to him. “You told us to watch for anything dangerous. You never mentioned midair acrobatics with you hanging from a helicopter.”
“I probably should have skipped that part,” he admitted. “It was all for nothing anyway.” Draping his socks over his shoulder, Kurt slipped his bare feet into his boots, pulled them tight and then climbed onto the saddle. He was dog tired, had a pounding headache and was not at all interested in hiking back to Falcon Point. “Thanks for having enough faith to bring me my horse. How did Joe and Morgan fare? Are they all right?”
This time Paul answered. “They secured the wreck site and radioed us about your stunt. We saw someone fall off a mile back. We were very glad to find out it wasn’t you. Then we saw you fall and feared the worst.”
“Let it be known that I jumped,” Kurt said. “Just glad I didn’t belly flop.”
“So what do we do now?” Gamay asked.
“Ride back to Falcon Point and search that plane from nose to tail.”
“Why?” Gamay asked. “Surely they took everything of value.”
Kurt stretched and twisted around in the saddle, reveling in the glorious feeling of his back cracking and his spine realigning itself. “We’ll never know until we check. They could easily have missed something. If they did, it’ll probably be something small and hidden. But sometimes the smallest clue can make the biggest difference.”
Chapter 39
With everyone gathered back at the site of the downed aircraft, Joe explained what he and Morgan had already learned. “All-metal construction,” Joe said. “Twin engines.”
“It’s in good condition?”
“Part of it is,�
� Joe said. “It’s a tale of two parts, really. Everything that’s been buried over the years is well preserved. Everything that’s been exposed up top has been badly weathered.”
The others looked on, following Joe’s hand as he pointed things out. The line of demarcation on the plane was remarkably clear.
“It’s not going to search itself,” Kurt said. “Let’s get to it.”
Gamay nodded and moved toward the front of the plane. “We’ll check the bow,” she said, including Paul in her statement. “I mean, the nose. It doesn’t look like they spent much time excavating that area.”
“I’ll take a look inside,” Kurt volunteered.
“I’ll join you,” Morgan said.
“That leaves the rest for me,” Joe said.
As the group spread out, Joe dropped down beside the fuselage to an area behind the wing. A section of the metal had been cut open and torn away.
He aimed his flashlight into the opening. The lower section was filled with sediment, though much of it had been dug out. He saw handprints and telltale scoops where someone’s fingers had clawed through the soil. “Couldn’t get a shovel in here, so they must have dug by hand.”
“Can you tell if they found anything?” Kurt asked.
Joe studied the compartment. “Doesn’t look like there was any cargo back here, just fuel pumps, rotted hoses and a large metal container that must have been the gas tank.” He rapped his fingers on it. The tank reverberated like a muffled steel drum. It was half filled with sediment too.
“Pretty big tank for such a small plane,” Joe said. “Whoever flew this wanted maximum range.”
Kurt listened to Joe, but his mind was on his own effort. After climbing up onto the fuselage, he and Morgan gazed down into the cockpit. On its exterior, they spotted metal tracks indented in the sides.
“These rails look like they were part of a sliding canopy,” Morgan suggested.
Kurt nodded, pointing to a spar jutting out in front of the cockpit. “It would have connected here to this stub of metal where a windscreen would have been fixed in place.”
They found no remnants of the canopy or screen. The loss had left the cockpit open to the elements for years and it had filled completely with sand until Kappa’s men shoveled it out.
Looking again inside, Kurt saw what remained of the instrument panel and pilot’s seat, which was nothing more than some wooden framing, rusted springs and shreds of leather. The control stick had been broken off at the base and was missing. A layer of sediment covered the floor, far deeper in the corners than in the middle. Shovels had gouged the wooden boards beneath the seat, even breaking through it in places.
“Didn’t exactly dig carefully,” Kurt said.
“Something tells me they weren’t interested in preservation,” Morgan replied.
Climbing over the edge of the fuselage, Kurt dropped down into the cockpit. He sat almost as the pilot would have, facing the instrument panel. It was largely intact, though most of the glass in the gauges was broken and the insides filled with sand.
Touching the panel, he found it was also made of wood. On the right-hand side he found a series of vertical scratches that had been crossed through. They reminded him of the marks prisoners made on the walls of their cells to count off the days and weeks in captivity.
“There’s something behind the seat,” Morgan said.
Kurt twisted around in the confined space and spotted a small steamer trunk. Rectangular and constructed of wood and leather, it had metal rivets at the corners. Its thicker hide had survived the years in better condition than the leather of the pilot’s seat.
Reaching around the remnants of the seat, Kurt found that the trunk had already been pulled forward as far as possible. It was now wedged between the base of the seat and the tubular framework of the fuselage.
It was impossible to imagine that Barlow’s men had missed it, but Kurt pushed the lid up and looked into it anyway.
“What do you see?” Morgan asked.
“It’s empty,” Kurt said. “Except for a layer of mud at the bottom.”
He reached down and dug through the residue, feeling for anything Kappa and his people might have missed. He searched for pockets or false compartments, then felt along the bottom of the trunk and in all the corners, turning the contents over with his fingers. The only thing he recovered were two chunks of stone, the largest one no bigger than a matchbox.
Scraping the residue off, he exposed its brick red color.
“Red stones,” Morgan said, looking on. “Just like the Writings of Qsn.”
Kurt handed her one of the pieces and stuffed the other in his pocket. They would search every nook and cranny in the cockpit and even pull out the instrument panel and look behind it without finding anything else of interest.
Having exhausted every possible hiding spot he could think of and coming up empty, Kurt climbed out of the plane. “Anyone else having any luck?”
“Nothing up front,” Paul called out.
“Nothing in the tail either,” Joe said.
“I was hoping they’d have been less thorough.”
“Maybe the plane itself can tell us something,” Morgan suggested. She turned to Joe. “You seem to be the aviation expert of the group. What do you make of this relic?”
Joe stepped away from the plane and moved back a few feet. “From the maintenance logbook, we know it was built in ’26 or ’27. The fact that it’s all-metal construction tells us something too. Very rare for that era.”
“Must be aluminum or it would have rusted,” Kurt said.
“Good point,” Joe replied. “And the twin engines and large fuel tank mean it was designed for high speed and long range. Normally, that would suggest it was a mail carrier or a small passenger plane, but I haven’t seen any room for cargo and there’s only one seat.”
“That’s not all that’s missing,” Paul added. “This thing doesn’t have any wheels.”
Paul and Gamay had searched the front of the plane without finding any cargo, but they’d followed up by excavating farther beneath the aircraft.
“No landing gear?” Morgan asked.
“Just a skid under the belly,” Paul said.
Kurt and Morgan hopped down and joined Joe. Together, the three of them moved to the front of the plane and crouched down to examine its structure.
Joe ducked under the nose and ran his hand along a ski-like rail. He followed it back to a spot on the fuselage where a rectangular indentation had filled with sediment. Using his fingers to dig out the debris, he found a solid metal pin and a hook linked to a braided metal wire.
“It looks like an attachment point for external equipment or munitions,” Morgan suggested. “Could this be a warplane?”
Joe didn’t think so. He moved farther back and came to another set of hooks that were positioned just aft of the cockpit. “It might not have wheels now, but it did when it took off. The landing gear would have connected here and up front. These hooks allowed the pilot to eject it after getting up in the air.”
“Why would any pilot want to eject their landing gear?” Gamay asked.
“Because wheels and struts are heavy,” Joe said. “They’re also not very aerodynamic. They create large amounts of drag, which slows you down and burns up fuel in the process.”
“They also help you land without crashing,” Gamay pointed out.
“Actually,” Joe said, “the pilot seems to have landed fairly safely. There’s no sign of impact, no folds in the sheet metal, no compression in the nose or twisting of the wings. From what I can see, there’s very little damage to the plane at all, even to the underside. I’d say the skid helped him put it down in the sand. A set of wheels would have sunk in and caused him to tumble end over end.”
“Then how’d he wind up with a broken leg?” Kurt asked.
“
Maybe he tripped and fell trying to walk out of here with a bag full of rocks,” Joe said.
As Kurt and the others took that in, Joe stepped back from the aircraft. It dawned on him that this was more than a standard vintage aircraft. It was built for a specific task. “Maybe this was a racing plane,” he said more to himself than the others. “The pilot may have been trying to set an aviation speed record or . . .”
His voice trailed off. He looked the plane over with a new perspective, studying it from the nose to what was left of the tail. He calculated the length and wingspan, then went over the other details in his head. “Two engines,” he said. “All-metal airframe. American pilot. Big, heavy fuel tank, for a plane this size, but a very small cockpit and throwaway landing gear.”
He looked to the others as the truth dawned on him. “This plane was on a one-way trip,” he said. “With some damage upon landing considered an acceptable outcome.”
“What kind of trip?”
Joe didn’t respond. He was lost in his own thoughts once again. His gaze came back to the front half of the plane, where he saw a circular mark the size of a small dinner plate. It stuck out slightly from the aircraft’s aluminum skin and its coloring and corrosion were different than the rest and blackened.
He stepped forward and began scraping at the corroded surface. “Why didn’t I see this before?”
“See what before?” Paul asked.
“This marker.”
Gamay reached out and grabbed Joe by the arm. “Time for you to let us in on the secret,” she said sternly. “What do you know and how do you know it?”
“I know what plane this is,” Joe said.
“You mean what kind of plane, don’t you?”
“No,” Joe said. “I know exactly what plane this is because it’s the only one of its kind ever built.”
Journey of the Pharaohs Page 19