Fire Flight

by John J. Nance

  “Of course.”

  “So what does he want?”

  “He said there’s been a tip, or report, about the crash.”

  Jerry’s brows almost came together, punctuating the severity of his frown. He leaned forward and shoved an expensive desk model of the DC-7C aside for an unobstructed view of Trent’s face, which was dead serious and somewhat flushed.

  “What the hell does that mean? What kind of tip?”

  The fact that Trent Jones licked his lips while studying the wall had already alerted Jerry it was going to be bad news.

  “Jerry, someone’s called NTSB headquarters claiming that Jeff’s airplane was brought down by sabotage.”

  “WHAT?”

  “The caller claimed that the wing was taken off by some sophisticated method the NTSB will have trouble finding.”

  “Bull!”

  “I’m just—”

  “Yeah, okay.” Jerry was on his feet. “Who’s the investigator?”

  “Steve Zale is his name.”

  “How experienced is he?”

  “Not very, at least at NTSB. Three months with the board, and before that, I don’t know.”

  “Oh, jeez! In other words we didn’t kill enough people for Washington to send someone competent, right?”

  “That’s…probably not fair. He does have an A&P license.”

  “Has he been to the crash site?”

  “Yes, he has.”

  “Has he inspected the wreckage and the wing attach points?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then he’s got to know the allegation is so much bullshit.”

  Trent was staring silently at him, and Jerry’s anger began rising.

  “What?” Jerry snapped.

  “I’m just…nothing.”

  “What do you know that I don’t?” Jerry said, coming from behind his desk.

  “Well…you say it’s BS, Jerry, but we don’t have any idea what happened, do we? I mean, there wasn’t supposed to be anything wrong with those wings, according to the inspections. So if they didn’t miss anything when they tore into the wing box and the attach fittings and the pins and everything in Florida, why would we…or you…suddenly think that sabotage wasn’t a possibility? I mean, Jeff had a lot of enemies, some of them angry husbands. And apparently they found something very suspicious in the wreckage, and they’re sending parts in for chemical analysis.”

  “What do you mean, suspicious? What parts?”

  “Jerry, let me call the man, and you can ask him rather than have me give you secondhand information.”

  Jerry sat down again in dark agitation and nodded, while Trent used the desk set to call the NTSB investigator’s cell phone.

  Within five minutes Steve Zale appeared in the maw of the open hangar headed for the office, and Jerry pointed to him.

  “Trent, you haven’t said anything to him about Jeff leaving a long trail of angry husbands and creditors, have you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Good. Don’t. This had nothing to do with the crew.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t frigging well have to understand. Just keep quiet.”

  Chapter 15

  IN FLIGHT, EAST OF JACKSON HOLE, WYOMING

  “We’re losing it, guys,” Sam Littlefox was saying on frequency as Clark stabilized the DC-6B on a high downwind again after his first of two runs over the fire.

  Rusty started to respond, but Clark motioned to him and punched the transmit button.

  “Four-Two, did we miss the target line back there?”

  “Negative, Tanker Eighty-eight. You did great. Everyone’s done great getting the target, but…I’m talking to the division supervisor and the fire’s already crowning and moving so fast, even if we can put enough retardant on it before it reaches the shoulder of that pass, it’s probably going to jump the line, just like yesterday. It’s the winds that are killing us.”

  “Okay, Lead, we have one more set of gates available, and you’ve got two more tankers inbound, so let’s just roll in right now and see if we can accelerate the time line.”

  “Eighty-eight, I’m getting worried about safety down there. You felt that wind. The downdrafts are just about out of limits.”

  “Let’s drop one more, Lead. Come on, Sammy. Start your roll in. We’re on your tiny little Beechcraft tail.”

  There was a hesitation, then a laugh and assent from the lead-plane pilot; Clark watched him roll into a steep left bank and prepared to do the same. Within three minutes the light twin was lining up for the last drop with the churning might of Tanker 88’s four engines booming through the smoke behind him, less than a half mile in trail.

  “Eighty-eight, I’m bringing you in the same as before, into the wind, which I’m computing at around forty-five now, and a hundred feet over the ridge. We need to soak that line of lodgepole pine just over the top. That’s where the fire’s going to jump. Can you see it?”

  “Negative, Four-Two. Too much smoke,” Rusty replied.

  Clark raised a finger and turned to Rusty. “Tell him to give us a mark the second he comes over the ridge. I’ll figure it out from there.”

  Rusty repeated the message on the frequency.

  “Roger, Eighty-eight, standby,” Lead Four-Two replied. “I’ll be over the ridge and over the target coming up now on my mark, three…two…one…mark!”

  Rusty glanced at Clark and saw his lips moving silently, the words “one thousand” clearly formed in front of each number. They had the flaps at twenty degrees and airspeed at 130 knots with a groundspeed of 85 knots, and he’d calculated exactly how many seconds ahead Lead Four-Two had been. Clark’s thumb was once again poised over the release button on the control yoke as he watched Sam’s Beech Baron suddenly become visible through the smoke, his wings wobbling left and right as the light twin’s pilot fought to stay upright and begin the pullout.

  Rusty’s eyes shifted from trees to the Baron at the same moment Clark did the reverse, his eyes on the approaching ridgeline with less than two seconds remaining in his count. The rumble of the DC-6B’s engines began to combine with the slap of the propellers biting large side gusts and the impact of the roiled wind currents on the big airplane.

  “Jesus CHRIST!” Rusty yelped, yanking Clark’s attention from the drop for a split second.

  “What?”

  “He…GOD! His left wing is failing!”

  They slammed through the same jarring impacts of updrafts and mixed-up downdrafts as Clark caught sight of the Baron for a fleeting second, then forced his attention back to the ridgeline. He mashed the release button and held the DC-6B as steady as possible while his mind processed the image he’d just seen.

  The left wing of the Baron was tilted up where it joined the outboard side of the left engine, not vertically, but at an angle the manufacturer had never contemplated.

  With the last of their fire retardant streaming out of the belly, Clark looked back toward the last location of the Baron through the smoke and haze and could see nothing.

  “My God…is he down?”

  “I don’t know!” Rusty said. “His left wing was folding…or failing…canted up, y’know? He’s gotta be down!”

  Clark rolled the DC-6B as steeply as he dared to the left, searching the burning forest below for any sign of a Baron or a fresh impact or anything that might reveal the fate of Sam Littlefox. At the same moment, an incoherent jumble of words an octave above normal range came through their headsets, followed by silence.

  “What was that?” Clark asked.

  “I think it was Sam.”

  A quarter mile ahead of the DC-6B Sam Littlefox felt the blood rushing to his head and the seat belt and shoulder straps cutting into him as he pushed harder on the yoke and goosed the throttles, somehow simultaneously aware that his airplane was now flying inverted and that he had no other choice.

  The horrific groaning of the metallic structure of his left wing as it had partially failed
and started bending upward had riveted his attention to a lesser degree than the sudden roll to the left as the tilting wing gave up some of its lift. The next few seconds were too bizarre to believe, but they were replaying in his head even now, as he struggled to make sense of an impossible situation, trees and smoke and ridgelines all appearing in the top of his windscreen with blue sky in the bottom as he hung upside down and pushed the inverted nose even higher to avoid the next ridgeline and get enough support from wings that were not designed to create downward lift.

  He recalled rolling almost uncontrollably to the left.

  And there had been the other sound, a horrendous metallic clang as the left wing—suddenly pushed downward by the relative wind of an inverted airplane—had snapped back into position.

  There had been no time for anything but instinct. The Baron was inverted, the left wing was where it should be for the moment and apparently holding. Those realities flashed through Sam’s mind in a microsecond, his aviating instinct dictating he stay that way.

  What was getting tougher was the dyslexic feel of trying to decide how to turn left or right while upside down and disoriented. The pain from the shoulder harness and the seat belt he could ignore. But to avoid a mountain peak that was really to the left of his flight path and now in the right side of his inverted windscreen, he had to appear to bank toward it in order to turn in the opposite direction, all the while keeping forward pressure on the yoke.

  A hundred questions seemed to cascade through his mind at once, as if he were mentally multitasking at warp speed. He could almost count the passage of the propeller blades, even though the engines were driving them at nearly two thousand revolutions per minute.

  The fact that he was probably going to die in seconds became merely an observation. But the fact that some metallurgical fluke was permitting the left wing to stay on when upside down, but not when right side up, was some sort of bizarre celestial joke that seemed to hold out salvation when none was possible. He couldn’t land successfully upside down. There would inevitably be a crash at the end of this tunnel, Sam knew. So should he prolong the flight as long as possible?

  On another detached plane of thinking, it had even become intriguing, an opportunity to demonstrate his aeronautical prowess. His airmanship.

  Okay…the wings will produce lift upside down as long as I keep a steep enough angle and enough power. Why is that wing holding? Who cares…it is for now. Okay, okay…to turn left, bank right…no, roll right slightly, gently…keep pushing. Steady out.

  Oh my God, the engines! Wait, wait…can these engines run upside down? YES! They’re fuel injected! How about fuel supply? I remember something about fuel supply on these tanks that makes it okay…

  He banked left to adjust his course to the right again and realized the altimeter and rate of climb instruments were working fine. He checked the rate of climb, pushing even harder on the yoke.

  Finally the needle began showing a small, steady climb.

  There was a nine-thousand-foot range of mountains ahead of him, and his altitude was less than eight thousand. He tried to flip the memory of the topographical map of the area around and see it inverted, then decided that was even more confusing.

  South. He had to turn south and find the low spot in the mountains leading to Jackson Hole.

  Sam realized his finger had been pressing on the transmit button but he’d said nothing coherent. He forced the button down once again and tried to make his voice work, hearing nothing but a squeak in his headset.

  Oh…that’s me!

  He cleared his throat and tried again.

  “Ah…Tanker Eighty-eight, are you okay?”

  The answer followed a brief hesitation, and he could hear strain and complete puzzlement in the voice in his ear.

  “Sam? Sam? Are you okay? Where are you?”

  “I’m…I guess roughly on the normal exit route, but…I’m trying to climb and turn south…and it’s hard to figure out.”

  “Wait, Sam, we see you now. Good God, you’re inverted.”

  “Yeah…that’s…the wing is staying on this way, but…I don’t think I can turn over. It was folding up…about ten, maybe fifteen degrees. It rolled me and then banged back into place.”

  “But you’re stable now?”

  “Yeah, I guess it’s against the stops or something.”

  “We’re pushing up the speed to join up on you, Sam. Hang in there.”

  There was a loud chuckle on frequency.

  “Yeah, hanging in here is exactly what I’m doing. Can you kind of help guide me toward Jackson Hole?”

  “Affirmative. Make gentle control movements.”

  “Absolutely I will make gentle movements. I don’t know how long this wing’s gonna stay on.”

  “You don’t…” the voice trailed off, but Sam knew precisely what the thought had been.

  “Negative, Eighty-eight…we don’t carry chutes.”

  A flurry of radio transmissions followed as the two other tanker crews tried to ascertain what was happening and Rusty tried to quiet them down with a burst of information.

  “Lead Four-Two has a major emergency, so everyone stand by while we escort him. His left wing is failing and he’s inverted, headed for Jackson Hole. Someone get on another frequency and notify Jackson and everyone.”

  “Tanker Eighteen will do it, and we’re gone,” an instantly tensed voice said. “Good luck, Sammy.”

  In the cockpit of the DC-6, Clark glanced at Rusty and tapped his microphone, indicating he wanted to take over the radio.

  “Sam, this is Clark Maxwell. You hear me okay?”

  “Yeah, Clark. Any suggestions?”

  “Well, for starters, you might want to change mechanics.”

  “Got that right!”

  “We’re about a half mile from you, Sam. You’re looking good and steady, but you’re going to need to change course a little bit more to the left…ah, which would seem to be your right.”

  “Give me a compass heading, Clark. Right and left are too confusing.”

  “Okay. You’re flying about two zero zero right now. Come to a heading of one eight zero.”

  “Got it,” Sam replied, banking the Baron very gently by rolling left and letting the course slowly come around.

  “Okay, when we’re almost clear of the peaks between us and Teton Village, I’ll have you come the other way to a heading of about two hundred and forty degrees.”

  “Roger…and then south to the airport, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Clark, you have…any wild ideas what I can do when I get there? I mean, I was just thinking I could probably ditch this thing in Lake Jackson, but the windscreen would probably break on touchdown.”

  The thought of a wall of water cascading through a failed windscreen at over a hundred knots flickered through Clark’s mind as it did through Sam’s. It would translate to certain death. He would stand a better chance skidding along a concrete runway upside down.

  Rusty’s right hand was waving around in Clark’s peripheral vision, and he looked over and punched the interphone.

  “What?”

  “There’s…something like this happened to an aerobatics pilot a few years ago, I think in a Zlin. His wing was failing, he flipped it over and the wing relocked, just like Sam’s.”

  “Did he survive?”

  “Yeah, but that’s what I’m getting to, Clark. It was the way he landed it.”

  Sam Littlefox’s voice was on the frequency, the tension palpable.

  “Any thoughts, guys? I…really don’t have a clue what I’m gonna do with this thing. I don’t even know why she’s still running.”

  “You’ve obviously got some sort of a flop line or an inverted trap in your fuel tanks, Sam. With fuel injection and that feature, the engines will keep going. Stand by on the ideas.”

  “Clark,” Rusty continued, “what the guy in the Zlin did was make the approach inverted, and when he was just about his wingspan over the c
oncrete, he snap rolled it upright and plopped it down and rolled off in one piece.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “No, honest.”

  “He can’t snap roll that Baron! The roll rate’s too slow.”

  “What other choice does he have? If he hits the concrete inverted, the tail hits first and then slams the cabin into the concrete and the windscreen’s going to fail, and even if the cabin doesn’t collapse on him, he’s got things coming in his face at a hundred knots, like broken prop blades.”

  “He could duck under the instrument panel, maybe?”

  “Maybe. But maybe this would work, too. The wing was bending, it didn’t break.”

  Clark punched the transmit button and relayed the idea. “You’d have to extend your gear while inverted, Sam.”

  “You’re serious? Roll it just above the runway and slam it on?”

  “We don’t know which one is a bigger risk. I know that bird doesn’t roll too fast.”

  “I…I can snap roll it with rudder, but at twenty feet or so…if I screw it up or the wing folds too fast, I’ll just roll it up sideways.”

  “Sam, you may need to experiment with your speed to see how slow she’ll fly like that. And start changing your heading now to two hundred twenty degrees.”

  “Roger. Two two zero degrees. Clark?”

  “Yeah, Sam.”

  “Ah…I think…maybe I…what if I slow down and test my stall speed like this?”

  “You just need to feel the burble, Sam. Not a full stall. Remember your wing produces lift upward normally, so upside down you’re at a much steeper deck angle to produce inverted lift, and I don’t think anyone knows how slow the wing can fly that way. It won’t be as slow as normal, of course.”

  “I’m holding one hundred and forty knots right now. Maybe when I get over the valley in a few minutes I can slow up.”

  “What’s your normal stall speed clean, Sam?” Clark asked.

  “Ah…clean stall is around eighty. Seventy-six to be exact.”

  “Okay, my best guess, Sammy, is that wing, upside down, will probably take you safely to a hundred knots. But before you go that slow, you’re going to have to test it. Wherever it begins to burble the airflow over the wing, you’ll need to add ten knots to that. But…the same winds that are blowing up the fire will actually help us over the runway. It’s kicking up nearly thirty knots down the runway at Jackson.”