Fire Flight

by John J. Nance

  “Clark, I just…I just don’t believe this!” he was saying.

  Clark nodded in sympathy. “I know it, Bill.”

  Deason’s beloved, fifty-three-year-old PB4Y-2 was sitting in the dirt several hundred feet away next to the ramp, never to fly again after a Forest Service order in January permanently grounded all such aircraft for the very type of wing failure that had apparently killed Jeff Maze. Deprived of the airplane he’d named The Aging Mistress, Deason now flew an ex-Navy P-3 Orion with “10” on the tail, a turboprop machine far more powerful, modern, and safe—but anything but his favorite. The telltale indicator, according to his wife, Judy, was the fact that he’d yet to name the P-3. For years he had taken immense pride in nursing his old piston-powered bomber along, coaxing amazing feats of precision and endurance out of a ship few others could handle. Modern turboprops like the P-3 were easy to fly, Bill maintained. But ancient air vessels like the PB4Y-2 were like sailing ships or steam locomotives in their cantankerous complexity. Such ships were mastered only by men willing to learn their unique language.

  Bill leaned wearily against the Ops counter, shaking his head.

  “Has anyone told Misty? Someone’s got to take care of Misty.”

  Chris Levine, who had been on the phone summoning reinforcements such as Karen Jones, shook his head sadly. “She’s on her way back from a funeral in Florida and due into Jackson Hole late this afternoon.”

  “A funeral?” Deason asked.

  “Her mother died last week. I’m trying to get someone to the Jackson airport to meet her when she arrives. This is going to devastate her.”

  Deason held up a finger. “Chris, call my wife, Judy. She can make that run to Jackson Hole and get her. She’s at the hotel. No, wait, I’ll call her.” Deason grabbed one of the phones and punched in the number as he glanced at Clark. “I always expected that someday Misty was going to blow Jeff’s head off with a shotgun,” he said softly. “It was shabby the way he treated her, but…she’s completely in love with him.” Bill grimaced. “Was in love with him.”

  Bill’s wife answered, and he turned away to speak in low tones about the unspeakable. Clark tried to turn his attention elsewhere, but Bill’s voice carried, and he knew that husband and wife were also dealing with the reality that it could just as easily be Misty Ryan arriving at Judy Deason’s door with news that she, too, had joined a long line of tanker widows who would get few benefits, little support, and no public recognition for their husbands’ sacrifices.

  Clark had known Bill and Judy for fifteen years. The couple had been happily married for thirty-six, and Judy had followed Bill through his hardscrabble crop-dusting days, which were endless years of tears and toil and paltry profits from spraying fields with poison from airplanes while trying to stay out of the power lines. She’d raised three good kids while he was doing battle with gravity, and she’d quietly taken the hardships in stride while Bill flew as an airtanker pilot and became one of the lucky few to survive more than twenty seasons. They were both good, caring people, highly respected by all the pilots.

  The whole community was filled with good, hardworking people, Clark thought. That was one of the attractions that had drawn him back into it, even after he’d sworn never to succumb again to the temptation to bomb burning trees with pink liquids. Part of the attraction was the unspoken camaraderie that bridged personal and professional disagreements among tanker pilots. But even though the FLOPPs didn’t think it manly to discuss, camaraderie was a distant second to the real narcotic of airtanker flying—the adrenaline high of dangerous aviating coupled with the instant satisfaction of seeing the fruits of your labor reflected in the trees below. That shared experience wove unspoken bonds among men who could be otherwise incredibly combative with one another, because together they shared a lofty secret: the knowledge that few mortals could do what they did and that, given the societal threat that massive forest fires posed, the risk was worth it.

  For those who had never been in the military, some of that risk was shouldered as much for God and country as for the paychecks that could keep a pilot and his family fed all winter. Every year there was a war to fight, and, mercenaries or not, they were the heroes to fight it.

  The brotherhood had been tested too many times with crashes and losses like this, Clark thought. Not that anyone would ever formally refer to airtankering in such warm, fuzzy, and collegial terms. But it was a brotherhood, with fewer than six hundred in the United States admitted to the inner circle of fire fighting as tanker, lead plane, jumpship, air attack, and helicopter pilots.

  The standby shack, which was normally full of wisecracking competitors needling one another unmercifully about nearly everything, usually resembled some seedy civilian version of the SAC “molehole” flight-line alert facilities, which had been manned 24/7 for over forty years by the Air Force’s former Strategic Air Command. It was heartbreaking to see that kind of testosterone-soaked, lighthearted atmosphere turn funereal and grim.

  Clark moved to one of the windows, letting the image of the DC-6 he was flying—Tanker 84—coalesce in his consciousness. As a DC-6, she was supposed to be far more sound than the lesser airplanes that had disintegrated in flight the previous summer. But the wings of aging airtankers took a terrible beating each time they hauled a fuselage full of slurry into that rough low-level environment. He trusted the DC-6, but now the shards of metal still smoldering in a forest forty miles distant were from a sister ship essentially identical to the one he was flying.

  Or, he corrected himself, was about to go fly once again.

  Worse, Jeff Maze’s airplane was the same one Clark would have been flying, and it had apparently come apart in flight, leaving the fuselage a ballistic projectile destined for catastrophic impact with the ground.

  Clark watched the ground crew in the distance waiting for the signal to began refueling the tanks they’d just emptied. Once again they would unmercifully stress the wings and the engines and the airframe, bouncing through shudderingly severe drafts and pulling g’s.

  So how strong were his wings?

  He thought of Tanker 88 in the hangar, and shuddered uncharacteristically. Should he ground Tanker 84 and wait for Tanker 88 to be back in commission? But if he did, what guarantees did he have that Tanker 88 wasn’t going to be the next one to come apart? Undoubtedly the Forest Service—which moved far faster than the FAA—was probably moving that very minute to ground all the DC-6Bs, at least the ones in Jerry Stein’s fleet, regardless of the devastating effect that would have on Jerry’s finances.

  But, Clark reminded himself, there was the not-so-insignificant problem of the growing forest fires east and northeast of Jackson Hole and the desperate need for every airtanker that could be coaxed into the air. He knew Jerry would already be on the phone hammering out an agreement with the Forest Service to let his crews go ahead and fly the DC-6Bs if the individual captains felt safe. Jerry Stein could make such a deal secure in the knowledge that none of his pilots would want to admit to being concerned and lose their paychecks in the process.

  Might as well suck it up and pray for survival and hope whatever I fly has at least another week of structural integrity.

  Clark recognized the self-delusion. It was a decisional acceptance one could never explain to a nonflying spouse or lover, and a direct kinship with the faith and fatalism that had permitted so many young men to climb into air machines in England during World War II, knowing their chances of returning as whole men were statistically slim.

  With an almost trancelike surrealism, Clark Maxwell gathered the paperwork from the dispatch desk as his substitute copilot, Josh White, came in from the ramp and moved to his side.

  “They’re waiting for the word to reload,” Josh explained.

  “Yeah, I was watching.”

  “And…I’m being replaced by your regular copilot.”

  Clark nodded, forcing a smile. “Yeah, Rusty told me. I’ll miss you, Josh. You didn’t steal my flight lunch like Rusty alw
ays does.”

  Josh White smiled self-consciously, the smile fading just as quickly as he glanced around the crowded room at the somber gathering. “One more thing, Clark. The mechanic I was talking to couldn’t find anything wrong with either engine three or four. He said we could be describing anything from an impending failure to our stomachs growling.”

  “You think he’s right?”

  He could see Josh weighing his reply as Rusty came up silently behind him.

  “You told him it was a racheting sound, right?” Clark added.

  “Yes, I did, and…the guy I was telling is an engine mechanic, and I think he’s right. He just doesn’t have enough information to troubleshoot.”

  “Okay.”

  “And…thanks for letting me fly with you,” Josh added, offering his hand, which Clark took.

  “Good job, Josh. Just…work on not hesitating when you have something to say, or something that’s worrying you.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  When Josh had walked away, Rusty inclined his head toward the ramp and Clark followed, closing the standby shack door behind him.

  “What’ve you got?” Clark asked.

  “I thought you might want to know what Boise’s thinking,” Rusty said, referring to the National Interagency Coordination Center. “I just sat in on a teleconference.”

  “What did Jim have to say?” Jim De Maio was a friend of Clark’s, and was recently appointed Forest Service assistant director of Fire and Aviation Operations.

  Rusty shoved his hands deep in his pockets and looked off to the southeast, toward the unseen fires chewing at the carpeted mountains adjacent to Jackson Hole.

  “Lynda was doing the briefing.”

  “Gardner?” Clark asked, an eyebrow raised.

  “Yes.”

  Lynda Gardner was a former smokejumper and now the intelligence coordinator and briefer at the Boise center. He was surprised she’d be doing the debrief over De Maio, but it was more than that. She and Clark had a history, Rusty knew, although the most information he’d squeezed out of Clark over too many beers one evening held that the Clark and Lynda story was little more than a brief and torrid rebound affair. It had arisen, he maintained, from mutual failed relationships and the convenience of summer proximity. They hadn’t seen each other in years.

  “Yeah, it was Lynda,” he teased, “and she was looking hot.”

  “You could tell that on a telephone conference?”

  “Okay, she sounded hot,” Rusty said, attempting to lift himself out of the depression of the moment with the kidding, and equally aware it wasn’t working. He sighed and continued. “She was basically telling De Maio and the others that the fire thirty miles due east of Jackson Hole airport—the Deer Creek fire—has the potential to jump the ridge and join a number of smaller fires, since the winds aren’t forecasted to let up for the next forty-eight hours at least. You know where Highway Twenty-six is?”

  “Yeah, the main highway from the east into Jackson Hole and the park.”

  “Right. She briefed that it could easily jump the highway west of Brecca Peak, and, if so, it had the potential to ignite Yellowstone. Only this time, if the fire starts, we could lose at least two towns and the east side of Teton Park.”

  “That’s worst case?”

  “Yeah, but a very real possibility, Clark. This is a really serious deal.”

  “What do they have committed to fight it?”

  “You ready for this? Total of eleven airtankers, three Skycranes, a mess of light helicopters, and two more P-3 Orions on the way from California.”

  “Good grief! That’s a huge effort.”

  “You can say that again! All of the tankers are coming here.”

  “What? West Yellowstone can’t handle more than eight, tops. Not to mention the facilities—look at this room! We’re falling all over one another right now with six birds outside.”

  “They’re bringing in additional loading tanks and crews, Clark. I guess they’re going to use Jerry’s ramp, too.”

  “Lord.”

  “And they’re really worried they didn’t get moving on this fast enough. Again.”

  “What’s Jim say?”

  “De Maio? He says that Lynda’s overstating the case about the slow reaction. But Clark, no shit, I could hear it in their voices. They’re really sweating a repeat of the monster that ate a third of Yellowstone in ’88.”

  Clark glanced through the windows of the operations room to the ramp beyond, taking in the doublewide trailer that served as the pilot ready room and fire retardant operations shack. Their aircraft sat on the retardant loading pad just to the west of the trailer, and Clark realized one of the loading crew was waving in the general direction of flight operations in hopes of snagging Clark’s attention.

  “They’re ready, Rusty. Let’s go.”

  Rusty nodded and picked up his flight bag, covering the hundred yards to the DC-6B as the mechanic held out a clipboard.

  “If you feel comfortable enough to fly, you gotta sign this release first.”

  “Would you fly with me?” Clark asked.

  “Hell, yes.” The mechanic grinned, muttering the rest of the answer under his breath, “Someday, in a Piper Cub.”

  Rusty had already disappeared into the aircraft, and Clark hesitated for a few seconds after handing back the signed form. He scanned the horizon and the intermittent deep blue appearing between the altocumulus clouds in the summer sky overhead. The temperature was in the lower seventies, the West Yellowstone wind—not being a product of the wind tunnel created by the Tetons and the Canadian low sitting north of Missoula—was a mere breeze of six knots. But it was strong enough to bring a bouquet of fresh aromas from the wildflowers carpeting the nearby meadows and the pines on the slopes, a scent not so much smelled as perceived on the thin mountain air.

  He could detect as well the aromas of an aging aircraft, from the sharp atomizing smell of aviation gasoline splashed on the leading edge of the wing and the concrete to the musty odor of oil staining the side of the engines. All of it was overburdened by the strong, occasional whiff of their perennial cargo: the thousands of gallons of red slurry made from water and fertilizers and carrying a unique bouquet of chemicals, including essence of dirty ammonia, a smell no tanker pilot could ever completely wash out of his clothes during the season.

  Clark sighed and forced his mind clear of the horror in the woods forty miles away. He would consider Jeff Maze’s death only when they returned. He put a foot on the entry ladder and paused involuntarily, his eyes raking the underside of the airplane where the wing and the fuselage joined. It was only sheet metal, of course. The serious fittings of metal to metal that held everything together was deep within, but he couldn’t help but look, as if reassurance would flow from an unbroken surface.

  Stop it! Clark commanded himself. He turned and climbed the ladder.

  As Tanker 84’s right outboard engine coughed to life and its propeller began rotating amid a cloud of bluish-black smoke, a few hundred yards away across the north end of the runway Karen Jones parked her Suburban and hurried toward the offices of Stein Aviation in search of her husband.

  Jerry Stein’s complex occupied the northwest side of the West Yellowstone Airport, adjacent to the north end of the single north-south runway. The northeast side was occupied by the Forest Service, with a moderate concrete ramp, the fire retardant mixing and loading areas (and adjacent doublewide trailer), and on the east side of the ramp behind a low fence, a single-story government building housing a small Operations office, meeting room, and large parachute support facility for the smokejumpers.

  Through the windows of the Operations office, the large ramp Jerry Stein had built across the runway could be seen fronting two large, new hangars. And in the maw of one of them, six of Stein’s mechanics could be seen conferring urgently about something.

  Karen looked closer, startled for no rational reason to see that one of the men was Trent. She moved quickly in his
direction, giving a perfunctory wave when he suddenly looked up and saw her.

  Tanned, tough, compact, and beautiful, Karen’s approach instantly riveted the attention of the other mechanics, and Trent smiled involuntarily in a flush of possessive male pride. The desirable female coming toward them with such self-confidence bore his last name.

  For a while longer, at least, Trent thought, well aware that breakup day was near.

  “Here comes my little honey,” he said for the others’ benefit, not realizing that most of them knew better. Trent tried to give her an inordinately affectionate hug as she reached the group, but she patted his shoulder and spun expertly away from his grasp, standing beside him, but surreptitiously holding him at bay.

  “So you guys must be this year’s version of the fabled hole-in-the-head wrench gang,” she said, her smile thin but sufficiently winning. Two of the faces were familiar, but she hadn’t seen West Yellowstone since the previous September, and the names had faded in her memory.

  The five other men nodded and introduced themselves, all but one raising a grease-covered hand to substitute for a handshake.

  “Could you give us a minute?” Karen asked, inclining her head toward Trent. She waited for them to scatter before pulling Trent by the arm into a corner of the hangar.

  “What?” he said, irritation replacing the show smile. “I’m busy.”

  She ignored the swipe. “Obviously, you’ve heard about the crash.”

  “Of course I have. We’re all stunned.”

  “Stunned? That’s decent of you. Jeff was a good friend, and they’re saying a wing fell off,” she said, her eyes boring into his.

  Trent was visibly pale. “Eyewitnesses can be very wrong,” he replied slowly. “It could have been anything. Even a midair.”

  “Convincing the wings to stay on is part of your responsibility, isn’t it? I mean, your crew inspected that bird?”

  Trent hardened visibly, his eyes narrowing.

  “What are you getting at?” he asked, his tone approaching a defensive snarl as he looked down and kicked a small bolt toward the hangar wall.