Saving Cascadia

by John J. Nance

  Distance and anonymity were the keys to success—and safety—now that someone was on her trail. She raced into the empty hallway and headed for the stairwell, focused on ways to evaporate from San Francisco.

  Chapter 2

  Despite all her training and instincts as a helicopter pilot, Jennifer Lindstrom did the unthinkable and took her hands off the controls.

  The big commercial Chinook helicopter with twenty-six paying passengers aboard continued to fly straight and level, the breathtaking vista of mountains and clouds and blue sky staying right where it should be in the windscreen.

  To compound the heresy, Jennifer moved her feet off the pedals that controlled the yawing motion of the craft.

  And still it flew on, steady as a rock.

  Smiling, exhilarated, and feeling otherwordly and decadent, she lifted her hands over her head and clasped them together, losing herself like a kid riding no-hands on a bicycle—a gesture no sane rotary wing pilot would ever make at the controls.

  The horizon remained steady.

  She closed her eyes, feeling the smile grow, her eyelids fluttering open only when a small sideways motion caught her attention.

  In an instant everything changed. She was being shoved to the right, and forests and fields were appearing in the windscreen where moments before only blue skies had been. Her heart rate jumped alarmingly as her body suddenly became lighter. The big Chinook twisted to the left, its attitude dangerously nose-down now, the airspeed rising.

  Jennifer’s hands instinctively found the controls again, her left on the collective, her right on the cyclic between her legs, her feet on the pedals as she began nudging them back in the right direction.

  But the controls were strangely reluctant.

  She pulled harder, but the harder she pulled, the more the controls resisted moving—and the turning dive was becoming acute.

  This isn’t happening!

  Panic began to seep into her like cold, rising water, overwhelming her quickly and quietly as options evaporated. Pulling was useless, the controls were somehow locked. The helicopter spun inexorably downward.

  Waking suddenly from the nightmarish scene, Jennifer Lindstrom sat bolt upright in bed, her feet and hands tangled in the bedcovers, her heart racing.

  Shakily she got to her feet and padded into the bathroom, noting when she looked in the mirror the haunted look on her face and the fear still in her eyes.

  No wonder the cat won’t sleep with me anymore!

  This was the third time in a month, and always the same insane dream, the same place, the same helicopter. Usually she couldn’t remember her dreams, but this one was there in living terror time after time, and it was beginning to shake her confidence as a pilot.

  Why would her mind even conceive of such a suicidal act, even in a dream?

  NEAR KING COUNTY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT (BOEING FIELD) SEATTLE, WASHINGTON FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 25TH 5:05 P.M.

  Good way to get us killed, Bub! Jennifer Lindstrom thought as she yanked her aircraft into an evasive maneuver.

  The tower controller had cleared a tiny Cessna 152 to land on the long runway, 16R, while Jennifer had clearance to land her Beech Bonanza on the small, parallel runway on the left. But she recognized the complete confusion in the hesitant response of the Cessna pilot and knew exactly what he was going to do, which was to aim for the wrong runway and slide dangerously in front of her.

  The agitated voice of the controller, a longtime friend, responded immediately. “Cessna Three Two Bravo, I told you, one six right! You just cut in front of a Bonanza!”

  A shaken, almost reedy male voice came on the frequency, the enormity of the mistake settling in. “Ah… I’m sorry, Tower, I thought you said the left one.”

  “Three Two Bravo if that’s you calling, use your call sign every time you transmit.”

  “Ah… Three Two… ah… Bravo, roger.”

  “Three Two Bravo, you’re now cleared to land runway one six left. Bonanza Five Four Hotel, you’re cleared to land on one six right. Break. Three Two Bravo, once on the ground, we’d like you to give us a landline call in the tower, sir. Ask the ground controller for the number when you’re parked.”

  “Ah… roger, sir. Three Two Bravo.”

  Jennifer punched her transmit button. “Bonanza Five Four Hotel, one six right, roger.” Undoubtedly, the Cessna driver was going to get tongue-lashed by the tower, and maybe formally violated. He deserved it.

  Jennifer flared her beloved old Bonanza and touched down smoothly, taxiing back to the large hangar belonging to Nightingale Aviation.

  Her company.

  The momentary duel with the clueless Cessna pilot forgotten, she ran the shutdown checklist, letting her eyes stray pridefully to the line of helicopters parked in front of the hangar door. Two were part of their separate charter operation, but the remainder formed the best, most modern fleet of emergency air evacuation helicopters on the west coast.

  Sven Lindstrom had taught his daughter well, though the process had been painful. Sven had always been a screamer as an instructor pilot, more attuned to the temperament of the worst of the old-time IPs in World War II than the enlightened methods of professional airmen. But through all the berating and verbal abuse he heaped on anyone who dared be his student in either fixed or rotary wing aircraft, the end result was an ability to meld with the machine, especially with helicopters. Jennifer loved flying choppers the best. She loved the feeling of not knowing where she ended and where the helicopter began, so in tune were her hands and feet with the essence of the controls. That was thanks to her father’s merciless insistence on perfection—especially in the case of a daughter who insisted on trying to do a man’s job.

  Just for a moment she lost her place in the checklist as her discipline wavered and her mind flashed to Doug Lam and the evening to come. She yanked herself back to the job at hand, smiling at the ground crewmen who hadn’t noticed her transitory failure to compartmentalize.

  Jennifer shook her mind back to the present and climbed out of the old J-35 Bonanza, the classic V-tailed doctor killer, as the joke went, a four-seater built in 1958 and purchased for fifty thousand dollars two years before. She’d wanted her own helicopter, but there wasn’t enough money in her personal accounts to handle the price or the cost of maintaining one.

  She passed through the building trying not to think of business. The hour in the Bonanza had been therapeutic, but passing the charter desk of Nightingale Air Services and the entrance to the medevac operation forced her mind back to business.

  The two operations were separate companies, and she served as president of both, a challenge that kept her scrambling to stay qualified and safe as a pilot. The resistance from the chief pilots of both operations to her flying the line was a constant irritation, yet she had to honor their independence and listen when they demanded more proficiency time or drew a line in the operational sand about attending another proficiency training course. Even the boss had to take a checkride twice a year.

  Six years as an Army Reserve MAST helicopter pilot had given her the basic flight experience, but the fact that she’d continued to build flight time on her father’s helicopter fleet during the six years she’d spent as a civilian nurse didn’t impress her colleagues much. To them, a professional medevac helicopter pilot had too big a professional challenge on a daily basis to permit any moonlighting. It was all but inconceivable that an ordinary individual could take a decade-long diversion into medicine and come back to fly line missions. But she refused to be ordinary.

  Not missions, she reminded herself. We’re not mission oriented. We’re operationally oriented. It was a small point, but significant. Mission orientation—save the patient at all costs—was a deadly philosophy responsible for many accidents and deaths across the country. It was called the “White Knight” syndrome, and it was her responsibility to keep it out of the heads of Nightingale pilots.

  Four years ago a stroke had grounded Sven Lindstrom as a pilot, and to som
e extent it had shoved him out of the business he’d built. A lifelong practice of buying commercial real estate had made him the fortune that enabled him to start Nightingale, but helicopters, not real estate, were his real passion. He’d loved every aspect of the operations, and turning over the reins to a mere girl had been traumatic. Jennifer couldn’t be sure which form of torture had been worse for her father: fighting to recover fully from the stroke, or watching her settle in as the boss.

  She turned for a moment to look at the impressive sign over the entrance to Nightingale Aviation. It would have been no surprise to see her father come barreling out of that same door like an energized tiger the way he’d always done at the end of the day, his face a study of intensity.

  It was getting late. She needed to get moving if she was going to be on time, but there was an unfinished matter tugging at her conscience. She couldn’t just walk off and leave that poor young pilot in the crosshairs of Brad Temple’s temper.

  She retraced her steps into the building to pick up the nearest phone with a tie-line to the tower, pleased to hear the familiar voice of the same controller who’d just snarled at the Cessna student.

  “Brad? Hi. Jennifer. Have you talked to that Cessna pilot yet?”

  “He just called in on the other line. I’m letting him cool his heels for a second.”

  “Look, Brad, the truth is, I really had plenty of room out there, and he’s obviously a newbie who’ll never forget the mistake he just made.”

  “We can’t have people pulling that sort of fool stunt without consequences, Jennifer.”

  “Yeah… and you’re talking to someone who has to admit she pulled that very same fool stunt a bunch of years ago, same runway, same airport, everything.”

  “You get violated?”

  “No. This very gruff, but gentle and wise tower controller had me come over in person. I thought he was going to yell at me and take my license and everything. He couldn’t have been calmer, and the way he handled it made a huge impression. I never even got close to doing that again.”

  “Okay. I get the point.”

  “Just… thought I’d let you know.”

  “I’m not going to violate him. Just read him the riot act.”

  “Good.”

  “Gently and wisely.”

  Jennifer smiled before replacing the phone and heading for the parking lot. She slumped behind the wheel of her 4Runner and closed the door, aware she had little more than an hour to become as drop-dead beautiful as possible before Doug arrived at her front door.

  Doug.

  How could she possibly explain to him how frustrated she was? And yet, how could she not? She should have been able to just ignore the feelings of uncertainty about their relationship, but the doubts had begun to eat at her, eroding her confidence. Was she being played for a fool, or was she just being foolish? There were moments when she felt guilty in wanting so much for him to take the final step of turning his three-and-a-half-year separation into a divorce. Why he couldn’t slam the door on Deborah Lam was a deepening mystery, but it was also tearing at her. Why on earth was he dragging his feet if he’d been as unhappy in the marriage as he’d claimed? He kept avoiding the subject, and that, too, was disturbing. Worse, it was now becoming a real cancer in their relationship. She could deal with a rational explanation—a real reason—but she couldn’t deal with silence, and if he hadn’t figured it out for himself, she was going to have to risk the relationship and just tell him.

  In some ways she was as upset with herself for hesitating as she was with him for doing nothing. Her timidity was embarrassing, especially for a woman who had such a need to be in control.

  But there was a lot at stake, and she had no idea how he’d respond. She’d long since fallen in love with him, and with that reality came the fear of losing him if she pushed too hard. Earlier in the week, though, she’d decided tonight was the time to bring it up as gently as possible. She owed that to herself, and to him.

  But, she thought, why ruin this beautiful evening? Why not leave it alone and hide in his arms for another night? Just one more. Wasn’t that a better thing to do? After all, there was a good reason. Tonight was the third anniversary of their first date.

  Jennifer felt as confused as ever, and when uncertainty overtook her, she knew what to do. Action was the only way out of the fog. If Sven had taught her nothing else it was how to square her shoulders and wade into whatever had to be done, rather than spend her life hiding from it. “Face it. Deal with it. Square your shoulders like a man,” Sven was fond of saying—knowing full well that he was addressing his daughter, who always cringed at the chauvinistic reference.

  There was no son to inherit the diminutive empire Sven had built. Fate had dealt him the Henry the Eighth card and given him only a daughter, and despite all his efforts to whip her into shape, regardless of how good she was at everything she did, she was still a she, the weaker sex.

  And yet she loved him endlessly, and spent far too much of herself trying to please him.

  She had staged one major rebellion at least. After earning her MBA, she had suddenly changed directions and decided to go to nursing school, and Sven had hit the roof.

  “A bleeding-heart nurse?” he’d raged to a male friend one night over brandy when he didn’t know his daughter was listening in the next room. “I try to get her ready to be a doctor or lawyer or something worthwhile, and she wants to prance around with bedpans like Florence Frigging Nightingale!” The verbal sneer became an oft-repeated complaint to anyone who’d listen.

  But there was delicious irony in the fact that just after Jennifer’s graduation, Sven Lindstrom’s young helicopter company had landed a major air medical transport service contract and one of his financial backers had suggested the name “Nightingale.” His fortunes were sure to soar with the building of an exclusive network for flying patients to hospitals, and somewhere along the way his eye-rolling animus to the “Nightingale” name had disappeared.

  “Great name, don’t you think?” he asked Jennifer the day they filed the corporate papers. “It’s a European bird, as well as the sympathy-evoking name of that famous nurse, and it instantly puts us on the side of the angels.”

  “Good decision, Dad,” she remembered telling him as she stifled a laugh.

  “Mom,” she said to her mother sometime later, “maybe we should push him to expand the name and make it the ‘Florence Frigging Nightingale Aviation Corporation.’ ”

  “Or ‘Bedpan Air!’ ” her mom replied, laughing uproariously at her husband’s unsuspecting expense.

  The truth was, Jennifer loved the old grouch. She just wished that it wasn’t so important deep down inside to please him, since complete fulfillment of that dream would always be blocked by her gender.

  She pulled the 4Runner into her condo parking spot, wondering if she should solve the painful discussion dilemma by just cancelling the date with Doug.

  But that was the coward’s way out, she thought, and she’d waffled back and forth too much as it was over the previous months. It was time to set a course and stick to it.

  Jennifer unconsciously headed for the shower, turning her attention to the more practical question of whether her feet could survive an evening in the new red pumps she’d bought a month ago and hadn’t had a chance to wear until now.

  Chapter 3

  43RD FLOOR, TRANSAMERICA PYRAMID, SAN FRANCISCO, 5:20 P.M.

  Mick Walker had leased an entire floor of the Transamerica building long before he could afford the rent. But it was just that level of bravado and risk taking that propelled the value of his high-wire-act developments around the world, doubling and redoubling his annual profits in a success story that seemed endless. There were rumors around town that now he could not only afford a couple of floors, he could buy the entire building.

  But he didn’t need a building. He needed a break, and for more than three decades he’d refused to stop working long enough to take one.

  He stood in fro
nt of his floor-to-ceiling office window thinking through the planned events of the next two days. The fractional business jet he’d ordered would be waiting at San Francisco International for the short flight to Seattle, and then his island.

  His island! As with so many other projects, he had run roughshod over the naysayers, defeating bad science and environmentalists and political enemies to create a marvel.

  The offices of Chadwick and Noble, the renowned engineering and architectural firm, had done most of the work on the amazing complex. It boasted a hotel, casino, convention center, and even ferry docks, all state-of-the-art and ready for the opening. The world headquarters of Chadwick and Noble stood two blocks away from the Transamerica building, and Mick imagined the discomfort of Robert Nelms, the managing partner, who was going to have to loft his considerable girth into a car to get to the same jet. Mick had insisted that Nelms “share” the limelight, but it was more a defensive maneuver in case technical questions were asked that the developer couldn’t adequately explain. Nelms was the master architect and engineer while Mick was the master showman who orchestrated talented people into lending him money to build things no one else would attempt.

  A gossamer image from long ago, a young woman with large, piercing eyes wearing a stunning blue cocktail dress at a dinner in Hong Kong, swam into his mind again. She came often in reflective moments. The daughter or girlfriend of an expatriate Westerner, she’d sat quietly through an important dinner with important men, listening to the captains of industry dance their dance, and just when he’d concluded that the lady in blue had been intimidated into silence, she’d caught his eye, and with a disturbing little smile that spoke of wisdom beyond her years, she asked if he was happy. Nothing more. Just that. “Are you happy?”

  He was just getting started with his Aussie air of confidence and his ability to orchestrate wonders, and he thought he had all answers to all questions on tap. It wasn’t the question that had rocked him. It was his inability to answer.