Fangs Out

by David Freed

The old man was silent for a few seconds. “Well, when you put it that way . . .”

  I asked Holland if he had any idea where Al might have gone.

  “The Eastern Sierra, probably. He’s got a little cabin up in the Owens Valley. Got his own dirt strip. Hasn’t flown in there for years, though. Not since he lost his medical.”

  I asked for driving directions.

  “I couldn’t begin to tell you how to drive there ’cuz I never did,” Holland said. “We always flew. It’s south and west of Bishop somewhere. I could probably find it from the air if I had to.”

  “We could take your airplane.”

  “My airplane?”

  “Assuming it’s still airworthy. I’ll even pay for fuel.”

  “I can’t fly,” Holland said. “My medical’s not current.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m a flight instructor. You’ll be flying with me.”

  Holland mulled my proposal. “It’s a deal,” he said with a rising excitement, “but I’m flying left seat.”

  “It’s your airplane, Cap’n.”

  There was a doughnut shop just north of Montgomery Airport. I stopped off for a quick breakfast—two plain cake bad boys and one large coffee. Inside were six molded plastic tables and seats, orange-colored, scrawled with gang graffiti. I dunked my doughnuts and savored each soggy morsel. If loving deep-fried dough is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

  I was polishing off doughnut number two when I glanced out the window and spotted a young, thin Asian man with dyed red hair standing across busy Balboa Avenue, about thirty meters away. He was aiming a digital camera at me. Or, if not at me, at the doughnut shop in which I was breakfasting.

  Under normal circumstances, I would’ve disregarded him. It’s a free country, pal, snap all the pictures you want. But these weren’t normal circumstances. Chinese intelligence was supposedly spying on Castle Robotics. Janet Bollinger, who’d worked at Castle Robotics, was dead. And someone had intentionally trashed my airplane. Was the Chinese government behind it all? I flashed on the two Asians in the Lexus I’d seen taking photos outside Castle’s headquarters two days earlier. And now this guy with his camera across the street.

  Call it coincidence—like when you read a word for the first time, and all of a sudden, you hear that word everywhere—but I was up and moving toward the door before I knew it.

  By the time I burst outside, the guy with the camera was gone.

  DUTCH HOLLAND’S Piper Cherokee hadn’t flown in more than two years, which coincided with how long it had been since the FAA yanked Holland’s medical certificate, effectively grounding him. That, however, hadn’t stopped him from putting the airplane through FAA-mandated annual inspections and running its engine at least once a week, if only to keep everything properly greased for its next owner.

  By the time I got to Montgomery Field, he’d already penciled in a flight plan to the Owens Valley on a couple of aeronautical charts and telephoned Lockheed flight service for a weather briefing. Forecasts called for light winds out of the west along our proposed route, with clear skies and visibility unlimited—CAVU in pilot lingo.

  “Good day to fly,” Holland said.

  “Is there any other kind?” I said.

  “I like your style, Logan.”

  He took out a tow bar from the Cherokee’s aft luggage compartment and hooked it to the nose wheel strut. I offered to pull the airplane from the hangar and he let me. The last thing either of us needed was Dutch Holland having The Big One.

  His preflight inspection was textbook meticulous. It was also glacial. Rockets have reached high orbit in less time than it took Holland to walk around his airplane, checking control surfaces, draining gas to make sure the fuel tanks had no water in them, fiddling with this and that.

  “Any chance we can get going sometime before the end of the year, Dutch?”

  “I’m surprised you’ve lived as long as you have with that kind of get-there-itis,” Holland said, peering at the oil dipstick through the lenses of his aviator frames. “You know what they say. There are old pilots, and bold pilots . . .”

  “But no old, bold pilots.”

  It was a truism in aviation, and I deserved the reprimand. Nothing will kill a pilot faster than impatience. I’d drilled the very same lesson into every one of my students—but not before convincing them that flying a small plane, if done correctly, is inherently safe. The last thing you want is to terrify somebody before they’ve paid you.

  I sat down with my back against the wall of his hangar, and waited for Holland to finish his walk-around inspection. What, I wondered, had I gotten myself into? Trusting a moth-eaten, half-blind pilot to fly me into the meteorologically unpredictable Sierra Nevada Mountains, hoping to find a remote dirt strip and another moth-eaten airman who might or might not shed light on who sabotaged my Cessna? Finding a roulette wheel in Vegas and betting my entire life savings, all three figures of it, would’ve made about as much sense.

  “OK, all set,” Holland hollered over to me.

  Too late to back out now.

  The old man grabbed the handhold bolted to the upper fuselage behind the Cherokee’s right rear window and, with no small effort, willed himself up onto the back of the wing. He unlatched the airplane’s only door, got down on all fours and crawled inside. The contortions it took for him just to reach a sitting position, then to slide over from the right seat into the left, were monumental. But any fear I may have had as to his piloting skills evaporated the moment I glimpsed the joy in his eyes. Holland was in his element.

  I climbed in after him and latched the door. Even though he knew it by heart, Holland asked me to help him run through the engine start checklist. After we’d gone through the procedures, he asked if anyone was standing near the airplane. I double-checked and told him no. He reached down, toggled the electrical master switch to “on,” rotated the ignition key to the left-magneto setting, planted his soft-sole old guy shoes on the toe brakes atop the rudder pedals, then cracked open a small hinged window on the pilot’s side, and yelled, “Clear!”

  A push of the starter button, a few pumps of the throttle, and the forty-five-year-old engine fired up as if it were factory new. Holland turned the ignition key to both magnetos, pulled the mixture control out an inch to avoid fouling the spark plugs, and retarded the throttle to idle. We donned headsets.

  “Need to get the ATIS,” he said, his gnarled, palsied fingers fumbling with a communications stack that was even older than mine.

  “How about I work the radios for you, Dutch?”

  “Good deal.”

  I dialed in the correct frequency for Montgomery’s Automated Terminal Information Service, the regularly updated recording that provides pilots with the current weather, altimeter setting and other pertinent information on airport conditions. I listened, then switched over to ground control, glancing as I did at the two inch-long placards affixed to the instrument panel in front of Holland that showed the airplane’s tail number, and pushed the mic button on the copilot’s yoke.

  “Montgomery ground, Cherokee 5-4-8-7 Whiskey. Ready to taxi, east end hangars with ATIS Foxtrot. We’re a PA-28 slant Uniform. Requesting a right downwind departure.”

  “Piper 5-4-8-7 Whiskey, taxi runway 28 right via taxiways Hotel, Alpha. Advise run-up complete.”

  Holland repeated the directions back to the controller before I could, barely able to contain his enthusiasm.

  “Your airplane,” I said.

  “A-OK,” Holland said, smiling.

  He couldn’t see for squat, but he didn’t need to. When you’ve wracked up more than 40,000 hours doing anything, as Dutch Holland had done piloting airplanes, skills become ingrained like they’re part of your DNA. He steered the Cherokee perfectly along the centerline of the taxiway. When we reached the engine run-up area, he stood on the left rudder pedal, turned the plane deftly into the wind, and set the parking brake. He tested the ailerons and elevator controls to make sure the inputs were working properly, mo
ving the yoke in and out, left and right, then pushed the throttle up to 2,000 RPMs, checking the carburetor heat control, the two magnetos, leaning over to peer closely at the oil temperature, fuel pressure, and a half-dozen other engine gauges. All were in the green. Holland pulled the throttle back to 1,000 RPMs.

  “Montgomery ground,” I radioed, “Cherokee 8-7 Whiskey, run-up complete.”

  “Cherokee 8-7 Whiskey, taxi to 2-8 right and contact the tower.”

  Holland released the parking brake and steered the plane toward the runway with his feet. “I love flying,” he said. “I’d have no complaints if that’s how I headed west.”

  In aviation circles, to say somebody “headed west” is to say they died. Where the euphemism came from I have no idea. But, personally, I could think of any number of other, more desirable ways to head west than in some hurtling piece of machinery. Having The Big One, for example, while celebrating your 100th birthday with three showgirls in the presidential suite of the Ritz. Or maybe just gazing into Savannah’s eyes.

  “Nobody’s heading west today,” I said. “We’re heading north.”

  Holland laughed and seemed not to notice the approaching hold-short line for runway 28 right. I thought he would stop the plane but he didn’t. I stood on the brakes to prevent the Cherokee from rolling without authorization onto the runway, just as a six-seater Piper Dakota touched down in front of us.

  “Sorry,” Holland said.

  He felt bad enough without me saying anything, so I didn’t. I switched the number one radio to tower frequency and announced that we were ready to go.

  “Cherokee 8-7 Whiskey, runway 28 right, cleared for takeoff, right downwind departure approved, wind 2-5-0 at 9.”

  “Cleared for takeoff, 2-8 right, with a right downwind departure.” I turned to Holland. “Bit of a crosswind from the left. You do remember how to do this, right?”

  A smile was his only response.

  He steered the plane onto the runway centerline and advanced the throttle. We were rolling. In seconds, we were climbing. Dutch Holland may not have been able to make out anything much past the nose of his airplane, but he still knew how to fly like the old pro he was.

  I looked left as we lifted off, hoping to glimpse the Ruptured Duck. But the hangar housing my airplane until the FAA completed its accident investigation was closed. I wasn’t sure which made me feel worse: seeing the Duck all banged up again or not seeing him at all.

  A pocket of turbulence rocked me back to reality.

  THE 344-MILE route Dutch Holland had laid out on his charts took us east of the restricted airspace surrounding the Marine Corps helicopter base at Miramar, then northwest, straight into the Owens Valley of eastern California. We’d first have to request permission to cut across Edwards Air Force Base, where Chuck Yeager in 1947 had broken the sound barrier, and where America’s original astronaut corps demonstrated the Right Stuff before conquering space. Unless Edwards was test-flying some new super secret aircraft, chances were good that air traffic control would give us permission to overfly the base. Holland had calculated our projected time en route accordingly at two hours and forty-five minutes. That allowed us a fuel reserve of about an hour.

  What he hadn’t counted on was the Air Force saying no to flying over Edwards. Or to the winds picking up.

  We were forced to turn northeast and cut across the high desert, halfway to Las Vegas, then north, then west again. By the time we penetrated the mouth of the Owens Valley and banked north once again, the gauges were showing less than a quarter-tank of fuel in either wing. Our ground speed had fallen to less than seventy miles-an-hour, while the unsettled air pushed the Cherokee around like a leaf on a millpond.

  “We’ll need to make a fuel stop,” I said.

  Holland leaned over to his right, our shoulders touching, raised his glasses and squinted at the gas gauges on the instrument panel in front of me.

  “Damn wind,” he said. “That’s not what they forecast.”

  “Weather forecasting is nothing more than fortune-telling with a few random numbers tossed in.”

  “You got that right.”

  Twin ridgelines towered on either side of the plane like fortress turrets, the Sierra Nevada on our left and the White-Inyo Mountains to our right. Many peaks were still topped with snow, even in June. The charts showed there was a small public airfield located on the valley floor about seven miles ahead of us with a single north–south runway. Holland wanted to keep going, but I persisted. Airplane fuel gauges can be notoriously inaccurate. Who’s to say we weren’t already flying on fumes?

  “I know my plane,” the old man said.

  “And I know you’re not legally allowed to fly without a certified flight instructor on board, Dutch, which, according to the FAA, I am. I’m sorry to pull rank, but that makes me pilot-in-command, and I say we put down before we have no choice.”

  Holland looked over at the mountains to our left, then down toward the ground, a mile below us. The area was starting to look familiar to him. Al Demaerschalk’s cabin and dirt airstrip, he said, were just up the way, probably no more than ten or twelve miles.

  I was starting to worry about committing aviation’s cardinal sin—running out of gas.

  “Let’s say we do find the cabin and land on Al’s strip,” I said. “By the time we take off, we may not have enough gas to get to someplace where we can refuel. We’d be stuck, unless Al could drive us somewhere. And we don’t even know if he’s there.”

  Holland rubbed his eyes. “Fuel’s gonna be cheaper up toward Bishop,” he said. “I say we land there, then go find Al’s cabin. But you’re the CFI. If you think we should put down, fine by me.”

  He held up both hands like he was surrendering the airplane to me. I took the controls and started looking for a runway on which to land.

  Looking back, maybe I should have listened to him.

  Fourteen

  There was no gas at the Fair Vista Airport. There was no nothing. Just a couple of boarded-up, weather-beaten, World War II-era hangars, and a crumbling tarmac with milkweeds growing out of the cracks. A mangy-looking pit bull with swollen teats barked at me as I stepped off the wing, before racing off toward an empty two-lane highway that paralleled the runway, about fifty meters to the west.

  Holland climbed down stiffly out of the airplane behind me.

  “Where’s the gas pumps?”

  “There are none.”

  “Then why did we land here, Mr. Certified Flight Instructor?”

  Good question.

  He shook his head and started walking toward the rear of the nearest hangar.

  “Where’re you going, Dutch?”

  “The little boy’s room.”

  We both knew what he meant. There was no public washroom at the Fair Vista Airport. But when you’re male and you’re outdoors, well . . .

  A parching wind whistled out of the north. The place reminded me of the mountainous region east of Kabul, only without the charm. I’d flown into Afghanistan frequently with the government, the last time to visit the Taliban’s leading manufacturer of quality suicide vests. We found him doing business behind a mud hut, hunched over an antique foot-powered sewing machine in a rusting steel Conex shipping container that doubled as his workshop. Eight vests laden with explosives were stacked neatly on the floor behind him. Our translator asked him his name. When he confirmed that he was the man we were looking for, we shot him. Two of his teenaged sons heard our muffled gunshots from their mud hut and came running, one armed with a Russian-made Makarov pistol, the other with a sword. We shot them, too. Then we shot a Taliban courier off his Honda trail bike as he rode in, presumably to fetch the new vests. We radioed for exfil, helicoptered back to Bagram, and got hammered on Wild Turkey, courtesy of a one-star from Joint Special Operations Command who said he couldn’t believe that a couple of go-to guys had done in a day what all of his operators had been unable to achieve in a year.

  A drunk member of my team told me that night
that Echevarria, who assigned our missions, had been bedding my wife while sending me overseas, sometimes for weeks at a time. Granted, I’d given her every reason to find comfort in the arms of another man; nobody would ever pin a merit badge on me for marital fidelity while I was away—and even when I was home, I admit I was a distant presence emotionally, my head still in the field. All I had left to share with her were jittery nerves and lingering, combat-induced anger. But still . . .

  I stopped drinking after that.

  The sound of an approaching car derricked me from Memory Lane. I turned to see a faded gold Oldsmobile Cutlass lurch off the highway and onto the tarmac, toward the plane, streaming a thin contrail of oily smoke. The driver was about twenty-five, shirtless and skinny.

  “How goes it?” He waved pleasantly as the car pulled up beside me. A pair of dice showing snake eyes was tattooed on his left deltoid. He was wearing dark wraparound sunglasses.

  “Just living the dream.”

  “Saw you land,” he said, shoving his transmission into park and stepping out. “We don’t get too many planes coming in here. Usually they just keep right on flying up the valley, all the way to Mammoth. Why land here unless you got engine trouble or something, right?”

  “We were running low on gas.”

  “Well, there’s no gas here, that’s for sure.” He was missing two lower front teeth.

  Tell me something I don’t know.

  He gestured with his thumb to a young woman slouched in the front passenger seat of his car, smoking a Marlboro red.

  “Yeah, me and her, we live down the road, ’bout a mile thatta way.”

  She was as scrawny as he was. Her hair was long and unwashed and zigzagged down the middle. Nasty-looking skin blemishes ravaged what had once been a pretty face. If the Crystal Meth Manufacturing Association of California was looking for poster kids, these two were it.

  “Nice airplane,” he said, gazing at the Cherokee. “How much you think something like this sells for?”

  “Hard to say. A lot depends on the radios, how much time there is on the engine.”