Fire Flight

by John J. Nance

  “Okay.” Clark followed him outside but reached up and caught his shoulder.

  “Bill?”

  “Yes?”

  “Maybe I should go alone. At four, I mean.”

  “Why’s that, Clark?”

  Clark shoved his hands in his pockets and watched an aircraft click on its landing lights in the distance as it lined up with the runway. He looked back at Bill Deason.

  “I don’t want to sound paranoid, but if someone is gunning for me, there’s no sense putting you in the same crosshairs. Besides, I have all the details.”

  He fully expected Bill to wave away the concern. Instead, he nodded solemnly.

  “You could be right.”

  “Okay. So I’ll take care of it and report back.”

  “Well, check your six, Clark. Okay?”

  “You mean my DC-6, or the six o’clock position relating to my posterior?”

  Bill smiled. “Both, actually, although in archaic fighterpilotspeak that refers to your tail feathers.”

  “Roger, Orion Lead, I’ll watch my six. Not to worry.”

  Bill was hesitating, Clark could see, grateful to be off the hook but embarrassed to be worried just the same.

  “I don’t mind telling you,” Bill continued, “this talk about sabotage is very worrisome.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  Bill waved and turned, his six-foot-three frame ambling off toward the motor-home parking area, his gait slightly lopsided from a crop-dusting accident years before that had left one shattered leg a bit shorter than the other.

  Clark turned his attention back to the airfield. The landing lights he’d been watching were closer now, and Clark squinted to make out the craft, wondering if the ETA estimate on Karen’s airplane could be wrong. Maybe this was the Twin Otter jumpship. He felt an involuntary burst of excitement at the thought that she might be climbing down to the ramp momentarily, and had to remind himself of the circumstances. Rusty thought she’d been roughed up, and if so, guess who was responsible for having irritated her husband.

  Clark turned to go back into the standby shack, pausing in momentary confusion. Had she had time to get the message he’d left on her hotel room phone? Probably not, he concluded, which meant he’d be approaching her cold, and in the presence of her “bros,” which might embarrass her.

  He could feel his cheeks flushing.

  No, he decided. I’ll watch from a distance when they arrive.

  After all, he wasn’t her protector, though that could change.

  And the thought brought a smile back to his face.

  Chapter 19

  WEST YELLOWSTONE AIRPORT, MONTANA

  Joe Groff sighed and sat back in the empty office, letting his mind roam through the possible solutions. He loved solving unexpected problems and proving his own brilliance to himself. And he was used to his employer grousing that he spent too much time finding solutions to problems that had yet to develop. But clearing away problems had always been his forte, and he was good at it. Jerry Stein had the visions and the entrepreneurial zeal, but it was up to the invisible man named Joe to make sure that no one interfered with those visions.

  He shook his head and smiled at a private joke, thinking again how smart he’d been to leave his detective shield behind in Miami six years ago to follow the pied piper of aging airplanes and serve as Jerry’s security director. Stein always introduced him as something else, of course. Some days he was a business associate, and other days he was Jerry Stein’s personal pilot, even though he barely knew how to fly small Cessnas. And some days, Joe knew, his were the real brains behind Jerry’s success. He was the shadowy operative who anticipated major problems and did something about them just in time.

  Of course, Jerry was the wily one who realized how many professional enemies he’d acquired over the years, and how vital it was to know more about the employees, the customers, and the other companies than they knew about him. It was, in other words, a dream job for a frustrated clandestine operative.

  It also helped, Joe thought, that he had a plain vanilla face that could suggest dozens of different people. Not a chameleon exactly, but over the years he’d found he could meet the same person two or three times during a year and never be remembered.

  Such as now.

  Joe drummed his fingers and thought through the next move. Clark Maxwell’s determination to bring in the FBI at this point was a very dangerous move, given the sensitivity of things. The attempt had to be thwarted. But while he pondered, an alerted FBI agent was getting ready to drive down from Helena to hear what Maxwell was worried about. Undoing that momentum was going to be tricky.

  Thank God I saw Maxwell looking for an empty office, Joe thought. Ducking in the parachute room and watching for the right line to light up had been a spur-of-the-moment reaction. Tapping into the call had been fairly easy for someone of his experience, especially since he’d already been shadowing the veteran captain. Maxwell had been on his close-watch list from the moment Joe had been told he was coming out of retirement for the season. He was well aware of Maxwell’s scathing article, though he hadn’t discussed it with Jerry. After all, they were short of pilots, and he figured he could keep careful watch on any seditious activity.

  Joe picked up the phone and punched into an empty line, using the memorized number from the small telephone pad decoder he’d used to intercept the number Maxwell had been calling.

  The field office receptionist answered in a now-familiar voice, and Joe dropped his voice to Clark’s range, matching inflection and volume.

  “Well, you can, if you are so inclined, connect me with Agent Blackson. This is Captain Clark Maxwell. I just talked to him not five minutes ago.”

  He waited for the FBI agent to come on the line.

  “Agent Blackson, I’m sorry to bother you again. This is Clark Maxwell. But…I was just talking with a colleague here who’s as worried as I am, and apparently he’s already talked extensively to your Denver office, so I guess I bothered you for nothing. I’m told they’re already on it. If you still want to meet, however…”

  “Well, it’s a pretty busy period. You say there’s someone in the Denver office actively taking your information?”

  “Yes, sir. The name is Special Agent…well, I can’t read my note on the name. Could be Brown, Black, or…I’m not sure except that it starts with a ‘B.’”

  There was a brief hesitation, and Joe held his breath until the agent’s sigh was followed by the reply he wanted to hear.

  “Well, that’s okay. I don’t need the name. I’m glad you called back, Captain. If you do need my involvement, however, call me again.”

  “I will. I’m sorry.”

  Joe replaced the phone and wrote a careful note to himself of the time and the number, little details that could prove critical later on—or could be completely worthless. You never knew.

  He checked his watch and thought through the question of whether he’d ever talked face-to-face with Clark Maxwell. He was very careful not to interact with Jerry’s employees unless absolutely necessary. The strict application of that policy had kept him a ghost with the ability to glide around Stein Aviation without raising an eyebrow.

  But Maxwell?

  No, Joe concluded. He’s a virgin contact. I can do it safely.

  JACKSON HOLE AIRPORT, WYOMING

  Jerry Stein was bored and, as usual, doing something about it. Time to kill was time wasted.

  He checked his watch in irritation as he listened to the response on the other end of the cell phone and simultaneously watched the last adjustments being made to attach the removable water-tank system beneath his Skycrane.

  “Hey!” Jerry barked into the phone before shifting it to his other ear.

  “Look, I’m trying to give you a news tip, and you want to play stupid telephone tag games with me?”

  Once again he was put on hold, and he tried to stifle his growing anger by letting his eyes roam over the huge, ungainly helicopter, which resembled
a metallic praying mantis. Amazing machine! he thought, indulging in a little pride that Stein Aviation owned one.

  Even though the Skycranes were the most expensive aircraft of all for the Forest Service to use on an hourly basis, they could suck up over sixteen thousand pounds of water in one gulp from any nearby lake using a huge hose and high-speed pumps, then dump the water exactly where it was needed and go back to the lake for another gulp. Unlike the tankers that had to land to refill, the Skycranes could keep up the tempo for hours—although water was less efficient than retardant at keeping trees along the line of an advancing fire from exploding in flame.

  There were three Skycranes already in operation on the Jackson Hole fires, and the Stein Aviation Skycrane would make four. Even with the winds above limits for everyone else, the Skycranes were heavy enough and stable enough to continue operating.

  Once again someone came on the line, and Jerry turned his attention back to the phone.

  “What? No, dammit! Connect me right now to the reporter covering that crash yesterday of the airtanker in Yellowstone. I don’t need the name; I need the reporter.”

  For the fifth time the insipid hold music started up, and he found himself seriously wondering how far he could toss the phone to demonstrate his frustration. He didn’t do counterproductive things like that much anymore, which put his reputation as a wild man in jeopardy. But he was tired of pretending whatever temper tantrum he’d pulled hadn’t been costly as well as totally ineffective. No, he decided. He liked this particular cell phone.

  Another voice came on the line, a male who introduced himself timidly, as if he were going to drop the receiver and run at the slightest hint of controversy, anger, or rage.

  Jerry instantly adjusted his approach to fit.

  “Mr. Fulton, is it?” he asked gently.

  “Yes.”

  “I am truly sorry to bother you, Mr. Fulton, but there’s a bit of information the authorities aren’t telling you about that Yellowstone accident yesterday.”

  “And, before I ask you what that is, may I get your name, please?”

  “I’m sorry, but I have to remain anonymous. However, I thought you needed to know that even though the NTSB isn’t admitting it, they think that the DC-6B crash was the result of sabotage. That’s why they’re being so quiet.”

  “Really? Do you have any proof of that?”

  “The proof has already been spirited away from the crash site by a helicopter rented by the NTSB. But you can take this to the bank: DC-6s are essentially incapable of losing their wings. That one was blown off.”

  “Why? Why would someone attack an airtanker?”

  “To make it look like all the nation’s airtankers are dangerous so that we’ll ground them and end up losing Yellowstone and the Tetons and Rocky Mountain National Park and a lot more. Don’t let them BS you. That DC-6 crash was not an accident. I have to go.”

  Jerry ended the connection and clipped the phone back to his belt as he walked toward the Skycrane. One of the maintenance crew was signing off the logbook, and the copilot was just completing his walk around as Jerry hailed him and pointed up.

  “You ready to go make some money?”

  “We’re launching?”

  “Immediately. Hope you brought your lunch.”

  The copilot nodded. He’d already learned the hard way that flying with Jerry Stein was a thinly disguised weight-control program.

  “Jerry, how’s it looking over there?” the copilot asked with a worried expression, pointing generally at the Forest Service Ops area.

  “You mean the fire?”

  “Yes. Who’s winning?”

  Jerry grinned at him. “We are, kid. I hate to say a mature forest fire is good business, but when the winds quiet down we’ll be bombing this one for weeks. Ka-ching, ka-ching.”

  WEST YELLOWSTONE AIRPORT, MONTANA

  Karen waited until every member of her squad had alighted from the Twin Otter before motioning for their attention.

  “Since we’re all in the same hotel, I think we can stow our gear and go back there as a group, but as per normal, we’re on until eighteen hundred local, and if they want to hold us over on standby—”

  “Twenty hundred. We know,” several of them chorused. Karen rolled her eyes at the usual joshing and motioned them on toward the Operations building, amused at the vague feeling that she looked like a mother duck with her ducklings in tow.

  Except that they’re all bigger than I am, she reminded herself. Even with the frustration of having to abort the jump, they were all in great spirits, as was she, and that fact suddenly seemed strange.

  She reminded herself how the day had begun and ran her fingers over the covered bruise on her face, suppressing another flash of anger. The enjoyment that came from focusing totally on her guys and the mission was too good to give up, and she forced away any thoughts of husbands and assaults and self-appointed stalking boyfriends.

  “Miss Jones? Got a note for you,” one of the Operations people said, leaning out the doorway as she walked by. The initials “CM” were in the upper-left-hand corner of the envelope, and she stuffed it into a pocket of her jumpsuit before anyone else could ask. For some reason, the arrival of the unread note was aggravating, and if it contained the sort of message she expected, she was going to have to put a quick end to this.

  Karen was back in her room at the hotel before she’d calmed enough to open the note. There was a message light blinking on her hotel room phone, and she wavered for a few seconds over which to attend to first.

  The note won out. Might as well get it over with.

  Karen,

  I’m quite concerned that you’re okay. My copilot said he saw you early this morning and your face appeared bruised, and I’m worried Trent might be behind it. Again, I’m deeply sorry if I put you in undeserved jeopardy of any sort. Please call me when it’s convenient and let me know you’re all right.

  Clark

  His cell phone number was written below, and she reached for the phone and punched it in, a carefully phrased response assembling itself in her mind. But she reached his voice mail instead and balked. What they needed to talk about should be done in person.

  Karen sat heavily on the end of the bed in thought, trying to meter the emotional need to tackle the problem before thinking it through. That tendency had landed her in trouble more than a few times, damaging friendships, ending promising romantic relationships, and causing unnecessary hurt feelings more times than she cared to count.

  We’re on standby. I shouldn’t leave the hotel until six, she told herself. Afterward, she could find Clark’s local address and go talk to him when she could be calm and poised. Calm and reason would be much better than landing on him like an angry cat with claws and fury.

  Chapter 20

  TWO HUNDRED MILES WEST OF YELLOWSTONE

  By midafternoon it had finally became irrefutably apparent to Misty Ryan that if she intended to honor Jeff’s wishes, she should not return to the Deasons’ motor home, regardless of their hospitality.

  Earlier she’d thought of just moving into Jeff’s room at the Best Western, sleeping in the spot he’d occupied and trying to find solace there. But when the manager let her in with a master key, the enormity and permanence of his absence chased her out in embarrassed confusion.

  The hotel had yet to match up the names of the pilots killed in the accident with their guest list, so Misty informed them of Jeff’s death and arranged to have his things boxed and sent to her home in California. Afterward, she left the hotel as quickly as possible and walked aimlessly into the neighboring countryside, acutely aware of every departure and arrival from the airport as she tried to decide what she was supposed to do now.

  Seeing to a decent burial for what was left of Jeff’s body was step one. From a forgotten corner of her mind the wreckage of a Catholic upbringing rose up to nag her again, this time about the proper funeral for a loved one. Rules. Always rules. Obligations and promises and rules dict
ating what she should do for a funeral and with the body.

  But Jeff had sworn allegiance to no religion other than himself, and in a tiny, ultimate act of revolt she decided a simple nondenominational service would be sufficient. If she arranged a mass, he’d probably rise up out of the coffin and strangle her.

  And then there was the matter of what was to become of her financially, although right now that seemed wholly irrelevant. Her supervisor at the Forest Service District Office knew she was in mourning and had promised a few days of personal leave anyway, so she wasn’t going to worry about it. If they wanted to fire her, she’d all but welcome the closure.

  Be my guest! she could imagine herself saying in response to such an imaginary dismissal. The defiant thought pleased her, then faded on another tidal wave of emotion, another small river of tears best shed in private.

  During the early afternoon she’d wandered through two of the taverns in town and added a moderate amount of alcohol to her confusion before deciding to leave immediately for California, then changing her mind and deciding to stay, and finally deciding not to decide anything for a few more days.

  But by two o’clock the thought of remaining anywhere close to West Yellowstone became torture.

  Misty walked quickly back to the airfield carrying her set of keys to Jeff’s truck. She slipped behind the wheel, luxuriating in a residual hint of his cologne, and started the engine. It would take a while to get to one of the interstates, but she didn’t care. She needed to be anywhere that West Yellowstone wasn’t, so any road toward the Pacific would do fine.

  CRASH SITE, YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

  Steve Zale snapped another picture of the broken wing-bolt assembly and stood for the first time in ten minutes, letting the blood regain circulation in his legs, a process that made him dizzy. The smell of burned wood was everywhere, though the blaze that the airtanker’s crash had started was now several miles to the north and barely contained.