“Sammy, you should let me run that winch.”
“I thought you didn’t want to drive the tractor, Will.”
“I’ve pulled out a lot of stumps and muskrat houses with that winch. Maybe you ought to let me handle it so it doesn’t burn out.”
Sammy glanced towards Hank and the others. “You sure, Will?”
Will’s face drew up tight in anger. “You guys steal my tractor. Now you tell me I can’t even get on it?”
“Let him handle the winch, Sammy,” said Pete. “We need someone who knows the machine on this kind of job.”
“You’ll see,” said Will.
“Well, come on, get over with me,” said Sammy. The winch control was beside Sammy, a lever on the metal floor of the tractor.
“The winch has enough power for what we want,” said the Captain. “Just pull the line taut and hold it there, Will. We don’t want the fuselage pulled out, just held tight so we can work on getting down beside it. Then, as the men dig, we may have to adjust the tension. Sammy, you might want to keep the tractor in gear in case the power of the transmission is also needed to pull back on the wheels in reverse. Everything has to be slow. Even tightening up on her might start her moving. We need to be careful. You got that, Will?”
Will nodded.
Captain Steele stood near the tail section and inspected the ropes and the winch cable. Hank was beside him.
“Hank, I realize you’re worried. You got to have faith. We always have risk in any rescue, no matter what.”
Hank nodded. “Just talk to Bobby,” he said. “He’s going to be so scared in there.”
Bobby listened while the Captain explained on the radio what they were going to do. “When we put a tight line on the fuselage to hold it steady, you may feel something.”
“That’s all right, Captain Steele.”
Hank added, as the Captain switched off the mike, “If the airframe holds together.”
Pete said, putting his hand on Hank’s shoulder, “Maybe later we will find out that there was a better way. I say let’s try it anyway and maybe the Lord will be with us.”
Hank turned to Melissa. She said, “You decide, Hank. You tell me what to do.”
Tawny’s cameraman turned on his video. Tawny and Duke stood by the wall of sandbags watching, she with her microphone in hand, her mouth open ready to speak.
“You give the signal, Hank,” said Sammy. “It’s your call.”
“All right. Everyone ready?” asked Hank. Then he motioned to Will to start the winch. The assembled group watched as the line worked through the block and tackle and began to take up slack against the fuselage. Hank as well as the other linemen pulled hard on their steering cables. The line was almost taut.
Sammy said, “Ease her, Will.”
Before Sammy could say any more, before the line put any pressure on the hulk, the plane started to slip forward into the muck, first a half inch or so then an inch and more. Hank’s worst fear had occurred. The old fuselage, the broken rudder, all were trembling the mound surface, ripples heading in all directions in the soft wet surface.
“Good Jesus,” said Sammy. “She’s moving down on her own. We got the ropes on just in time. Hold taut on the winch and the hand lines.”
Over the wind noise and the pelting rain, the old fuselage metal creaked.
Will applied the winch. The sliding process reversed. The rudder was coming to the surface, further out than before, much further. A whole section that had been covered before was seen, the area of the number and the section beside it with the corrosion and even more. More bullet holes could be seen in the lower part of the rudder assembly.
The Captain called out, “Will, you’re pulling the damn thing out. Don’t wind that winch any more. We just want it back where it was. You’re pulling too hard.”
Hank saw Will bent over the control lever, his eyes on the moving rudder as it came out of the mud into the air.
Hank screamed, “Stop it, Will, damn you. Somebody stop him!” He let go his line to the man behind him and started toward Will.
Will kept his hands tightly on the control lever. Sammy was reaching down, trying to free the lever from Will’s grasp.
A section of fuselage was easing out of the mound with bits of earth and streams of water running down its sides. Slowly, an inch more was exposed, then another inch, then an area of bent and corroded metal with some large holes in a staggered pattern. Part of a striped United States insignia with the edge of a white star came into view.
“You damn fool. You’re winching too hard on purpose!” Hank had almost reached Will.
The noise suddenly increased to a shriek, and the winch drum began smoking. Captain Steele hollered “Shut it down, Shut it down. You’re going to lose the plane!”
It was too late.
With a wrenching noise the clutch of the winch burned out and the drum ran free. At the mound, the rudder and the rest of the fuselage immediately started to sink back. The end of the line whipped through the block and into the mound surface, hitting boards and sandbags with loud noises and clanks, spattering muck. The other lines that had held the fuselage pulled taut but the men were not able to hold them. The ropes wrenched from their hands and slipped back into the mud wall like snakes going into their holes until only small portions of the twisted and broken ends were sticking out. The remains of the fuselage had disappeared with the water and mire seething back over it like a closing door.
Finally it stopped moving.
Hank pulled Will down from the tractor and shoved him against a tire, shaking him against the cleats and hitting his face over and over. Blood spurted out of Will’s mouth and nose as he tried to fend off Hank.
“You killed him, you bastard. You just killed Bobby,” Hank screamed as he hit Will again. “On top of that you might have set off some damn bombs on her and blown all of us to hell, you damn fool.”
The Captain and Pete pulled Hank away. Will slumped against the tire then slid down to the ground, water along his legs and almost to his waist. He moved his hands slowly over his face, rubbing away the blood.
“I wanted to hit him, too, Hank,” said Sammy. “Then I realized that there’s no sense to it. He ain’t worth anything and never will be.”
Pete said, “I don’t know what more we can do, my friend.” He called to Charlie at the radio tent. “Try to get to Bobby”
“I’m calling, “Charlie yelled over the wind.
Hank looked over with haunted eyes. “You think it’s hopeless, too, Pete?”
“We don’t know how far that airplane is going to slide. Of course, we can guess bombs aren’t on her because nothing went off with all that shaking. Unfortunately, not much holding her from starting again and going right on down into a real deep part. Then we can’t hope to get the boy out.”
“Forty, fifty, a hundred feet down. P47 airplanes were heavy. She would sink by the nose, I’m sure, right Captain?” asked Hank, rubbing his fist that had hit Will.
“I’m afraid so. I think what happened is those broken wings caught the earth when we were pulling. I was worried about that. They opened outward and held just like anchor spokes against the mound.”
“We might try to dig after her,” said Hank.
“If we did that it would probably sink just as we got near to it,” said the Captain.
“That old wreck must have been just sitting there on the edge, ready to slip lower and we helped it go,” said Sammy.
“We had no way of knowing,” said Pete. “We took a chance, that’s all.”
“Well, I’m still for trying to dig something. We can get the dig teams set back up and start in by hand to see what we can find, that is, until she starts slipping again. We’ll have to dig by hand. Can’t risk using the tractor any more,” said Sammy.
“Follow those ropes,” said Hank.
“Yeah. We know how long the ropes were. Judging from them, I expect that she is in thirty feet more.”
“Tipped a little bit
more to the bottom,” said Hank.
“I think it’s probably both,” said the Captain. “From the lengths of rope that went in, I guess she has moved ahead maybe ten feet and then she might have gone in to the ground about ten feet.”
“So she’s down deeper and Bobby is facing straight down into the ground,” said Hank.
“The plane is in a dive attitude, yes, I think so,” said Captain Steele.
“Maybe we can find something of the tunnel still and at least crawl in to where he is,” said Sammy.
“Not much chance of doing that is there, Pete?” asked Melissa.
“You want the truth?” he said.
She nodded.
“No, I’m afraid there isn’t much chance left, Melissa. We got the same problem we had before we tried to hold her back, only it’s worse now. I’m sorry.”
The television reporter began. “This is Tawny Slight reporting from River Sunday where the last chapter of a great tragedy has just begun. For the last hour the combined rescue teams and Federal Park Rangers have tried to pull an old warplane out of the earth. The airframe, caught in the swamp for more than fifty years, is holding a small boy who crawled into it through a cave here last evening. While the best minds available had rigged the extraction process no one could have foreseen that all hope would be lost when the winch and ropes broke loose and the plane plunged down, carrying the child too deep for the rescue to continue. The wreck has stopped moving so we are waiting to see if it starts again into the depths of the Wilderness.”
“Chief, what will you and the others do?” asked Tawny.
Sammy answered, spitting, “We will pray that we get to the boy before our time runs out.”
“We will pray too, Captain Steele. Thank you,” said Tawny and then she motioned to her photographer, “Cut.”
Tears were coming down Melissa’s cheeks. “How long will your men continue to do that work on the sandbags? I mean how much longer will you be trying to get my boy?”
“Well, I don’t rightly know,” said Sammy. “Water’s coming in more. We might be able to keep on going for a while. Then, we will have to make a guess as to what chance the boy still might have.”
“I’ll pay to keep men digging,” Melissa said, sobbing.
“Well it’s not so much a case of that. It is whether we got a reason to keep on going. You remember when we started we did not know whether he was alive. Then we heard him talk and that kind of proved that we was right to dig here in the first place. We need something else to happen to give us some encouragement that we can succeed.”
“If it doesn’t happen?” she asked.
“We’ll have to make a decision that all of us agree on.”
“You’ll talk to us before you stop trying to find him?” asked Hank.
“We’ll talk. One thing that’s going to hurt us, though.”
“What’s that, Sammy?” asked Hank.
“We don’t know whether we are going to be able to hold back this flood water.”
“What about the sandbags?” she asked.
“They might hold for a while. If it comes on to blow real hard and the surge comes in with the tide, we can’t win.”
“Is there anything more that we can do?” asked Hank.
“We are doing all we can.”
“If the water breaks through to the mound?” Melissa asked, staring at the ground.
“Let’s us worry about that when we get there,” said Sammy.
“How much longer before the tide is full?” asked Melissa.
“Well,” Sammy scanned the marsh, “the Coast Guard has been on the radio saying that the big water will be here soon.” He walked toward the sandbag wall. “You men know the risk. I want only volunteers here. The rest of you can head back to your families.”
As he spoke several firemen picked up their shovels and began to dig again in the collapsed trench.
Sammy said, “Melissa, you come over here. Hank, you ought to see this too.” She walked slowly toward the wall, hesitant.
Hank did not move. He already knew.
Sammy pointed outside the wall where the water had risen to half the height of the stacked sandbags, The sandbags had only about two feet margin over the top of the marsh water level.
“The water is getting higher. It gets rough in spurts,” said Sammy.
“What do you mean?” asked Melissa.
“You get some wind behind it in big gusts and that water will hit like a bulldozer. Those sandbags will go sliding in every direction. That’s what my worry is.” He continued, “I got to be sure that my men are safe.” He moved his arm around. “We got our rescue workers out here working on this job and a lot of equipment, tools, that kind of thing. We get a sudden flooding out here if the wind picks up and some of the people may get hurt, maybe drowned.”
“I understand,” she said slowly.
“Don’t you worry, I ain’t given up yet.”
“Thank you,” she said.
Hank knelt, a shovel beside him, at the wall in front. He put his face in his hands. The rain was falling more bitterly.” I don’t know what more I can do,” he said in prayer. “Lord, show me a way to save my son.”
“Hope we still have time,” said Pete.
Betty came up to Hank. “Bobby will be all right,” she said.
“Betty, you don’t understand. We don’t even have a plan to go forward. I’ve got to think of what I can say to Bobby.”
Duke and Tawny were inspecting the barge damage. Hank heard them talking.
“So we have it all,” said Duke. “Here is the final war. Nature against the best that men can put up against it and nature wins this time.”
Then Duke paused for a moment and said. “Wait a minute. Maybe it’s the machine, the airplane, that’s winning here. The machine that we designed to kill other men turns around and kills us. An ironic moment. On top of that, ask yourself. What is more the killer here today, the wrath of nature at being tampered with or the impersonal machine that has no soul. Neither is loyal to us. Either can just as easily kill us.”
“I’ve read some of your editorials about nature’s power. This time, you’re implying that the airplane wreck has a life of its own?” asked Tawny.
Duke nodded. “An interesting concept.”
“It’s an old warplane continuing to hunt down prey. That’s a little too heavy for my editor.”
Duke smiled. “I’ve lived here a long time, Tawny. Seen a lot. Just lay my editorializing off to that.”
Tawny moved toward the boats to go to shore. “It’s pretty much over out here. I’m going.”
Hank heard Duke follow her to the water’s edge.
“I’ll let you know what happens,” Duke said to her. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone get rescued once they are buried in the mud. Besides that, the storm is going to be one of the worst in years. We almost never get storms this bad coming in the spring. The rescue is dangerous enough but with the storm, too, I think it’s pretty near impossible.”
Will, his face with a small bandage over the nose, had stayed near his tractor, its wheels inches in water. His goal seemed to be to retrieve at least part of the rudder that showed the number. If he could get that he could have it analyzed. He kept muttering to anyone who would listen he was sorry for what had happened, that it was an urge to try to get the aircraft out and that he thought the winch could do it. He was wrong and he was sorry.
Hank saw the growing puddles of water. An image of his past, of another funeral, the one for his father and mother, came into his mind. Their deaths came on the highway near a small intersection at a single lane highway. His father and mother were going at highway speed on the main road and a farmer drove directly in front of them from a side road without stopping. They had no chance to brake. Their car was destroyed and they were killed instantly. Hank remembered going to the funeral home and seeing them together. The whole fire department turned out. Sammy had stood up at the side of the casket, his right hand on the
polished wood, Father Tom to his left.
Sammy started talking. “I guess I should say something. This man’s been our boss at the department for a lot of years. We’ll miss him. I’d like to share something a lot of you don’t even know about him. Many of you folks don’t remember the early days when this good man came to River Sunday.
“Back there, we’d go to the movies with our families. There was one night we were all there and the manager went to the stage and turned on the lights, a special intermission he told us. He was a short fat man as I remember.
“He said that he was announcing the beginning of a fund to build a monument in front of the River Sunday Courthouse that would be in honor of Melusina Allingham for her bravery in taking on and helping to sink a German submarine. He said that his ushers were going to come row by row and we ought to put in whatever we could to help raise the money. My father next to me reached in to his pocket and took out ten dollars. I remember the amount because that was a lot of money in those days.
Sammy had raised his hand slightly over the casket of Hank’s father. “This man was there too, not married then, sitting all by himself in one of the back rows. He stood up and nobody noticed him for a while. When the manager was just about ready to come down off the stage, one of his ushers pointed to Hank’s father.
“You have something to say, Mister Green?” the manager had asked.
“I give five hundred dollars,” Hank’s father had said and sat down.
“Well,” said Sammy, “We heard a murmur in that theatre, voices breaking louder talk and lots of people glancing around at this man. It was true enough. The usher went over to him and received a personal check for five hundred dollars.
“The reason I tell you this story is that this man was so poor in those days he barely had money to eat. He took what money he had saved, however, and put it towards a project that meant a lot to his adopted town. I’ve never forgotten his kindness.”
Hank remembered that after the funeral he had approached the old desk in his father’s office with some hesitation. He had been standing by the desk so many times of the years to get his allowance or to get money for some errand his mother wanted him to run, and then later, as a partner in the store, to get his salary. It was a strange feeling to stand there with his father and mother just buried. He felt like a thief as he sat down at the desk and began to glance through his father’s papers. One of the papers required for probate was a birth certificate or some official document indicating who his father was for the final records. Because his father had been a displaced person, he had documentation showing when he had been admitted to the United States and when he was given citizenship. The letters of transfer from Argentina to Canada then to Maryland were in order along with all the business records. His mother kept the accounts. She had even made a folder that showed every repair that had ever been done to the old van.
Easter Sunday (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 7) Page 13