Running Dark

by Joseph Heywood

So much for the fuck-buddy concept, he thought as he backed out of her driveway.

  Joe Flap was waiting at his house near Trenary.

  “I want you to fly me to the Garden the night of the fourteenth,” Service said.

  “Have you seen da weather forecast?”

  “It’s what I want.”

  “Fly you ta da Garden for what?” the pilot asked.

  Service lifted his hand, opened his fingers, and made a downward fluttering motion toward a tabletop. The pilot shut his eyes and said, “Oh shit.”

  “Yes or no?”

  “Even your old man wasn’t dis crazy,” Joe Flap said. “I’m in.”

  The pilot got two beers from the fridge and the two men sat down at the table and spread maps out and began discussing what Service had in mind. At one point, Flap asked, “How youse gonna gauge da wind?”

  “I’m not. You’re the pilot.”

  Joe Flap looked at the map and shook his head. “You got balls, kid. But da jury’s out on your brains.”

  23

  MARQUETTE, FEBRUARY 14, 1976

  “She’ll pop up like a butterfly in a hurricane.”

  The noise inside the single-engine DHC-2 Beaver was nearly unbearable, but Service wore a headset with an interphone connection, and he tried to ignore the ear-shattering roar as he checked his gear for the umpteenth time.

  Joe Flap had taxied into position for a northeast takeoff into a heavy wind that made the aircraft shake as they sat waiting for clearance. Six inches of fresh snow had fallen in Marquette during the day, with up to another twenty inches being called for tonight. The snowfall in the Garden was less, as it normally was, but even down there forecasts called for ten to twelve inches over the next twenty-four hours. Service was pleased. The worse the weather, he reasoned, the fewer the people who would be out.

  Service knew his pilot was less than pleased about his plan, but he had committed to helping; now he sat in uncharacteristic silence, fiddling with the choke, leaning the mixture of the engine and constantly exercising the ailerons to make sure they weren’t icing up.

  “Can we get off in this wind?” Service asked over the intercom.

  “She’ll pop up like a butterfly in a hurricane,” the pilot said. “I filed VFR, and Minneapolis Center is pissed and Green Bay is pissed and da tower people here are in a snit, and da snowplow drivers are bent outta shape, but VFR is my bloody call, not a buncha scope-dopes and ground-pounders, eh.” VFR meant Visual Flight Rules, the term for a pilot operating independent of ground-based radar control. “I can see my prop, eh? Dat makes ’er visual.”

  “Can you get back?” Service asked.

  “I piss more gas den it takes ta get youse down to da Garden. I got a good eight hundred miles range. If dey close da field here, I’ll take ’er downstate to Traverse City or even Grand Rapids. You don’t gotta worry about Joe Flap. Youse keep your mind on youse,” the pilot concluded sharply.

  The tower called on the radio. “DNR Air Four, the plows are clear of the runway. You’re cleared on to the active, contact Green Bay at . . . ” Service listened as Flap wrote the frequency on his leg pad. “Wind, zero four zero at thirty-two knots, gusting to forty. You sure you wanna do this tonight, Air Four?”

  “Wind’s right in our snoots—tanks for da info, DNR Air Four.”

  Flap released the brakes, which vibrated and made a clunking sound, and pulled onto the runway facing into the wind. He pushed the throttle up slightly, let the engine rumble, and shoved it further forward. The bulky aircraft began to vibrate more violently and to move slowly forward. Service sat in a seat behind the pilot and looked out a large triangular window on either side. He could not see the sides of the runway, and when he looked forward all he could see was a sea of snow flooding the windscreen. “DNR Air Four is rolling,” Joe Flap reported to the tower.

  The engine strained and roared and the gear chattered, barked, and vibrated under the strain of moving. Service thought it would take a long time to get airborne, but suddenly the nose came sharply up and they were aloft, bouncing around in uneven air. He looked at the instruments and saw they were climbing at a rate of just over a thousand feet per minute.

  Joe Flap was on his radio, “Green Bay, DNR Air Four is airborne, VFR, requesting angels two.”

  “Roger, DNR, squawk three one four four, you are cleared to two thousand, maintain heading of zero four five. You’re all alone up there tonight, Air Four.”

  “Roger, Green Bay, tanks for da help. Level at two thou, steady on zero four five. Youse have a good night.”

  Service felt the aircraft turning to the right as the pilot altered course to the southeast for the twenty-five minute flight to the Garden Peninsula.

  He used the time to go over their plan again. The highest terrain in the U.P. was seven hundred and forty-six feet. In the marines he had jumped numerous times at six hundred feet above the ground elevation; tonight, for safety, he would step out at seven hundred and fifty feet, which would provide adequate time to deploy his chute and equipment bag. Treebone had used his connections to get the chute from someone at the Air Guard unit at Selfridge Field in Mt. Clemens. Probably Joe Flap would cheat up a little, thinking he was helping, and there was no way to stop the pilot from doing this; if he was a little higher, he’d be in the air a little longer, but not all that much. Flap had argued vehemently for him to jump at two thousand feet, but Service figured there was too much potential for windage and getting too far off his drop zone. He’d rather go out low and get it over with fast. Because there would be no time for a second chance at such a low altitude, he had not bothered with a reserve chute, knowing if he had a problem, he’d end up as brush wolf chow. He had discussed the jump at length with Tree, who agreed that the simpler, the better. Tree didn’t lecture him on the advisability of jumping; his friend had stuck to details, making sure he had covered everything he needed to address.

  The temperature at Marquette had been minus eighteen at takeoff. Manistique and the Garden were eight or nine degrees warmer, but with the Beaver flying at a hundred miles an hour, the wind would be blasting him when he got outside, and the wind chill would be brutal. The trick was to minimize exposure and get on the ground as quickly as possible.

  “Heading into da Garden,” Flap said over the interphone.

  “How’s the wind?”

  “Pretty steady at about twenty, right out of da northeast.”

  “Okay.”

  The plan was to drop him over farm fields northeast of Cecilia Lasurm’s house and let the wind carry him down to a field about a mile north of her place. If Joe put him in the right field and if he got down without breaking a leg, getting to her place should be easy. Not the time to dwell on “ifs,” he chastised himself. He needed to focus on those things he could control. Getting him to the drop zone was the pilot’s job. Sweat the stuff you can control, he told himself.

  Their indicated airspeed was just under one hundred and ten knots. The wind was banging them around from time to time, but the old Beaver, built in 1954, was Joe Flap’s favorite, and the pilot quickly recovered from each burble.

  Service was dressed heavily. He wore the same long johns and socks he’d worn during the snowmobile patrol, but this time he had no uniform and no badge, and wore insulated sweatpants over his long johns, and a wool sweater and heavy white parka over his snowmobile suit, which he had streaked with white paint. He also had a lightweight white parka with olive-charcoal camo patterns, but this was in his equipment bag, and he would use it as an outer layer after he was on the ground. The top layer would provide no warmth, but it would make him hard to see against snowy terrain.

  Joe Flap announced, “Youse got eight minutes.”

  Service said, “Removing hatch.” He unlatched the door and stowed it against the starboard bulkhead with a strap. Flap said it wouldn’t affect his f
light profile or comfort to have the door out; he could always crank up his heat to compensate. Service wrestled his gear bag over to the door and checked that the zipper was secure. The bag was white and had two straps so it could be attached to either side of his parachute harness at the waist. Once his chute was open, he would release the equipment bag, which would drop away and ride down ahead of him on a thirty-foot-long lanyard. There was a risk of landing on the bag or having the lanyard get tangled in trees, but he was jumping into an open field and hoped there would be no complications like telephone wires or fences. Don’t think about it, he told himself. Focus on what you’re doing and keep your head in the game. Basic roulette, he thought, red or black, odd or even, make your bet and watch the wheel spin.

  “Disconnecting interphone,” he told the pilot.

  Service tucked the headset in a bin on the fuselage, pulled on a white wool balaclava and forced his helmet down over the top of it, dropped the face shield into place, and locked it. He looked up at Joe Flap who held up four fingers, meaning four minutes until he jumped. He hooked the equipment bag to both sides of his harness and swung his legs over the edge of the hatch. The aircraft had no internal cabin light except for the glow of flight instruments in front of Flap. The snow was racing sideways, a blur of small white arrows. Service stepped down to the right-wing strut facing aft and wedged his boot into the metal V. The wind was pushing the equipment bag against the back of his legs and making it difficult to stay on his perch, but he clung to the strut with his left glove and put his right hand on the D-ring of the parachute.

  He seemed to be suspended in the frigid wind for hours until the engine power was pulled back and gunned, the signal for him to go. He tucked his chin to his chest and stepped aft off the strut, dropping straight down. As soon as he left his perch he pulled the ripcord and heard a sibilant pfft as the pilot chute came loose and began deploying the main chute. He relaxed, waiting for the parachute’s opening shock, and told himself it was not quite as cold as he had anticipated. Adrenaline kept him focused on the things he had to do rather than on the elements.

  When the air settled into the canopy, there was a sudden, violent yank at his crotch and he had the sensation of climbing as his weight settled under the silk. He looked up, saw the canopy above him, and immediately disconnected the equipment bag and lanyard so that the heavy bag would proceed downward ahead of him.

  When the bag fully deployed, he felt a sharp tug below him and knew he had done all he could. He reached up both risers of the military chute and pulled with his right hand and pushed with his left to shift his body sideways to the wind, as close to forty-five degrees as he could manage. His mind was empty, his only focus the direction of the wind and relaxing himself for impact.

  He had no idea how long he had been dropping, but he guessed the ground was close. He looked straight ahead toward an imaginary horizon, reached up the risers with his gloves, put his feet together, and relaxed his knees for impact. He felt no fear, only an urge to get on the ground as he popped loose the cover of the right riser release.

  At the instant he felt contact, he let himself roll to his left side, and when he plowed into deep snow with his body, he released the right riser and the chute collapsed partway, and stopped dragging him. He instinctively rolled onto his belly and up to his knees, freed the second riser, and began yanking the shroud lines and silk canopy toward him. When the canopy was bunched around him, he used the lanyard to pull the equipment bag to him, unzipped it, got out his white camo parka cover, took off the parachute harness, stuffed his helmet, the harness, and parachute into the equipment bag, and finally allowed himself to pause and take a deep breath. Time to assess. First thought: Jesus, this wind is goddamn cold.

  How long since he had stepped off the strut? Two minutes? He listened but couldn’t hear the Beaver. The wind was growling and screaming, roiling fresh snow into a swirling white wall. You asked for shit weather.

  No lights in evidence. Good. If he was on the drop zone there should be a tree line due south of him. First order of business: Get into the trees, relax, have a smoke, and evaluate the terrain and his situation.

  He slid the equipment bag straps over his shoulders, cinched them as tight as he could over his bulky clothes, and trudged off into the fluffy, knee-deep snow, the wind coming over his left shoulder, his heart still racing from the suddenness of the jump and the landing. He had no idea how Joe had navigated to the drop zone, but he had. He hoped.

  He thought he heard unmuffled engines moving toward him from his right and froze in place. What the hell? He dropped to one knee. The wind velocity had picked up, and the snow was still moving parallel to the ground as falling snow mixed with snow being whipped up from the surface. It also felt like the snow’s consistency had changed from fluff to ice pellets, and he had no idea what that presaged for weather. The wind itself was a naked roar overhead, like a locomotive approaching, and somewhere below that sound, he could sense as much as hear engines coming closer. He went prone in the snow, knowing that the white gear bag would look like a snowdrift.

  Snowmobiles came from the west, advancing steadily through the soft fresh snow, and passed twenty yards in front of him. He counted four, and wondered what fools would be out in this. People who knew the trails well enough not to worry about running into something, he knew.

  When the machines were past, he got up and eased forward to where they had moved from his right to his left. He found the foot-wide track of the machines and stepped gingerly over it, rubbing out his own tracks once he was over. He moved into fresh drifts, knowing his tracks would soon be blown closed. If the locals were out tonight in near-zero visibility, he told himself, they could be out any time, anywhere. Keep that in mind while you’re here. Planning for the worst was the only reasonable approach, he knew from experience. His old commander in Vietnam always insisted that the plan changed with first contact with the enemy, and he had no doubt that the Garden rats were his enemies as he marched south, wondering where the goddamn tree line was.

  Ten minutes later the wind had shifted to directly behind him, and ahead he heard the clatter and rubbing of tree branches being whipped against each other. Soon he was at the edge of the tree line. He paused briefly, stepped inside, and felt around in the dark until he found a blowdown. He brushed away snow piled on the downed tree, used his boots to kick out a space beneath it, and got down into his hidey-hole. He dug into his equipment bag, took out a Snickers bar, and chewed it slowly. Sugar was quick energy, and energy equaled endurance.

  He sat beneath the log reviewing preparations he had made with Lasurm. She would provide food and he would eat what she ate; she had started shopping after their last meeting, building up her stocks a little at a time so nobody would notice a change in her shopping habits. Batteries, cigarettes—she had a list of everything he needed. He had given her cash to pay for it. It wasn’t clear how or if he would be reimbursed by the state.

  Tonight Lasurm would have her outside lights on—one on the house, the other on her garage. She had been turning the two lights on for a while, again to make it look like her normal habit, but he told her if for some reason someone questioned this or got curious, she could turn on the garage light for one minute, at ten minutes after the hour, starting at 9 p.m. and continuing until 2 a.m. If he was not there by then, she should assume he was not coming, and await another ad in the Manistique paper.

  Candy bar done, he got out of his hide, hoisted and adjusted his pack straps, and checked his compass. The tree line stretched east about a quarter mile, and he could make his way through the woods inside the cover and follow the elbow to where it bent to the south toward Lasurm’s place. Or, he could cut directly through the woods to the next field and look for her lights and head directly for her house.

  The wind was still making a racket in the trees, but the snow was not as heavy inside the cover with branches acting as an overhead filter. He
chose to cut through on the direct line, and when he got to the outer edge, he stopped and searched south, looking for any sign of light. He found nothing but darkness flensed by blowing snow. He estimated he was about a third of a mile from her place. He checked his watch again. If her outside lights were out, she would not signal for another forty minutes.

  If this was the right tree line.

  A third of a mile would make a light shine like a beacon, but not in this weather. He needed to find the house, get in close, keep it in view, and wait. He checked his compass and began walking south into the open field, the wind still at his back and the temperature dropping. His brief stop had left him chilled. If he stopped again he would strip off his outer layer and put it on again when he moved. Dangerous to get sweaty in this kind of weather, he lectured himself. Hypothermia could settle in quickly. He moved slowly and deliberately to minimize perspiration, telling himself he would not stop again until he had the house in sight. This is a truly stupid idea, parachuting into hostile territory during a blizzard to see a one-legged woman who just wanted peace in the Garden.

  PART III

  NIGHT GARDENING

  24

  BURN’T BLUFF, FEBRUARY 14, 1976

  The animal’s fur was as coarse as a Brillo pad.

  The snow paused just before 10 p.m. Service saw the darkened form of a house some two hundred yards ahead of him and walked toward it. It was the same house he had seen during the air recon with Joe Flap, a three-story box with a widow’s walk on top, an old farmhouse with no trees close to it. The garage was unattached, thirty or forty feet south of the house. No lights, but he thought he saw the movement of smoke plumes from the chimney. There would be a ninety-degree turn in a county road several hundred feet south of the garage, and another east-west treeline, with Burn’t Bluff at the western terminus.

  He got next to the house, sniffed wood smoke, which reminded him of how badly he wanted another cigarette. When the garage light flashed on for one minute, and at 2201 went out, he breathed a heavy sigh of relief, circled to the south side of the building, stepped into the storm entry, and pounded twice on the door. If someone other than Lasurm answered, he would tell them he had run his car off the road and ask them to call the Delta County sheriff’s department. It could be a hassle, but he would bull his way through, and let the county haul him out, knowing he would have to scrub the mission. Be there, he entreated as he waited.