Fire Flight

by John J. Nance

  He glanced at his watch, wondering if he should get back to the hotel room he’d rented and try to transmit the close-ups he’d taken to Washington before the end of the day, or whether anyone there was paying attention. So far his urgent recommendation to launch a modified Go Team had been laughed at and labeled as the alarmist blathering of a newly minted NTSB field investigator who didn’t yet understand the basic politics and dynamics of allocating precious National Transportation Safety Board resources.

  “Look, I know this stuff. I was with the Forest Service for twenty-four years,” Steve had told the head of the air accident investigation division. “These people only have about twenty or thirty big airplanes left for fire bombing over the entire U.S., and a lot of them are old DC-4s, DC-6s, and DC-7s. If there’s a basic flaw here and the Forest Service grounds that fleet, they’ve got nothing left, and this whole area’s already on fire. We need to make sure we get this one right, and I’m just one guy.”

  There had been a sigh on the other end, as if his superior had been forced to give the same tired explanation a thousand times.

  “Steve, if we start getting heavy political guns on Capitol Hill demanding more attention to this, then we’ll give it more attention. But the board is stretched very thin right now, and you’ve got a very simple situation out there. A wing fell off. Okay? You said so yourself. This isn’t a hairy human factors deal where a captain flies a perfectly good airplane into a perfectly good mountain for no apparent reason and leaves us needing to hire the great Kreskin to read his very deceased mind. Just, plain and simple now, the damned wing came off. So go find out why the wing came off. It can’t be that difficult. Send us samples, send us pictures, send us small portions of critical parts. Follow your training and the book. The lab will work its magic and let you know about anything you submit, and in the end I’ll review everything and help you reach a logical conclusion. That’s how we do field investigations, especially when it’s nothing but metallurgy involved. Well, metallurgy and maintenance history, of course.”

  He’d reholstered his cell phone feeling as if he’d been spanked, but that had been nothing compared to the embarrassment of the call an hour later.

  “Steve? This is Ron, back at the board, your long-suffering boss. Do you have any reason whatsoever to believe the wing came off that DC-6 due to some form of sabotage?”

  “Sabotage? Good grief, no. I’m standing right here at the—”

  “Then what the hell are you doing speculating about sabotage in front of the operator?”

  “I haven’t mentioned the word or the concept. Who’s saying I did?”

  “Apparently rumors are running rampant out there and spilling into the media that the NTSB is investigating the possibility of terrorist-based sabotage. I just got a call from the Department of Homeland Security, for God’s sake, and you are the NTSB out there for the moment. So tell me, so I won’t be the goddamned last to know. Are we investigating the possibility of terrorist-based sabotage?”

  “Ron, I…no! Of course not. When I talked yesterday with the owner, Jerry Stein, and his chief of maintenance, they asked me about the possibility, and I told them it was far too early to identify any particular cause. I thought that was a nutty question, the terrorist part. But I said precisely what I was supposed to say.”

  “Word for word?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There had been a blessed pause and a telling snort. “Okay, I think I get the picture.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Just refuse to touch that issue, and discuss nothing else with those people. We’ll do the denials from here.”

  Steve shook his head to expunge the cold chill the call had caused. He toggled on the digital screen on the back of his camera and pulled up the close-ups he’d taken. He needed to compose the words to go with them.

  Let’s see…the break apparently began at the lower forward attach point in the wing box–mounted fitting itself.

  The critical point looked a little like the cross section of a door hinge, a metal loop on the wing root that fit snugly between the two metal loops on the fuselage wing box, with a carefully engineered metal pin inserted through the combined loops and holding the assembly tight.

  When the casting attached to the fuselage broke, it caused the wing to rotate upward and overstress and break the remaining fittings. The pin was still in place, but it shows signs of excessive wear and fatigue and some corrosion, as does the entire attach point.

  The next major step, he thought, aside from sending the pictures in and arranging for the critical pieces of the flange and wing pins to be shipped to Washington, is to plow through the maintenance history of Ship 86. There had to have been a growing crack for some time. Maybe there was something in the records that could explain how it could have gone undetected.

  But of one thing he was certain. There was zero evidence of sabotage.

  STROZIE ’S TAVERN, WEST YELLOWSTONE, MONTANA

  Mentally, Joe Groff had already joined the FBI by the time he pushed through the door of the bar.

  He loved projecting himself into role playing. He knew he would have made a great actor, too, if he’d had the tolerance to put up with the meat-market aspects of making it in Hollywood.

  But this was almost as good.

  He’d had to scrabble through his on-the-road wardrobe for a black suit and a conservative tie to wear with his one white shirt. FBI agents had far more latitude in dressing these days, he knew, than when J. Edgar Hoover ran the bureau, but he was dressing to convince a man just old enough to think of federal agents as closer to men in black than anything else.

  Joe scanned the bar’s smoky interior for someone who matched the file photo of Clark Maxwell from the computer database he kept of Jerry’s employees. The accompanying information contained no indication that a face-to-face meeting between them had ever taken place, so at worst Joe’s face might seem vaguely familiar, as someone once passed in the hall.

  There was, of course, the problem of federal law, and that had stopped him for a few moments. Impersonating a federal agent was a felony, but the solution he’d come up with should keep him safe from prosecution.

  There you are, Joe thought, spotting Maxwell at the back of the bar beneath a precarious display of beer mugs and other paraphernalia. Six feet, well built and trim, it was his roundish face and the way his mouth seemed permanently engaged in a warm smile under a full head of dark hair that made the I.D. complete. He’d been nursing a beer.

  “Captain Maxwell?” Joe asked, taking the pilot’s large, outstretched hand.

  “Yes. Agent Blackson, I presume?”

  Joe sat next to him and shook his head, keeping track of the bartender who was eyeing him suspiciously and moving his way.

  “Actually, no, sir. I’m Randy Michaels. Agent Blackson ended up stuck in Helena, and even though in truth I’ve only had part of my Quantico training, and therefore I’m not technically a federal agent as yet, I’ve been tasked to come in his place.” Good touch, Joe thought. He’d been through Quantico as a Marine decades before, but the name was synonymous with the FBI Academy. “I hope that’s okay with you, sir,” he added, eyebrows raised in anticipation of a judgment as the bartender arrived across the bar.

  “Oh, of course. I just assumed you’d been around awhile.”

  Joe laughed. “I have, but in other capacities. They gave me a great opportunity to make a late career change.” He looked at the bartender. “I’ll have an Oly Light, please.”

  “We don’t have that anymore.”

  “Okay. A Bud Light, then.”

  The man moved off to retrieve the order, still wearing a disapproving look.

  Clark had been waiting to reply. “I just appreciate anyone coming on such short notice. But did Agent Blackson brief you?”

  Joe nodded, repeating the essence of Clark Maxwell’s end of the phone call with impressive accuracy.

  He could see Maxwell relax.

  “Okay,
good. That’s exactly right.” Clark Maxwell looked around, gauging whether anyone else could hear them, or might be trying.

  “Perhaps you should start by telling me in detail what you’ve uncovered about your employer’s fleet and why it leads you to think that these aircraft are being used illicitly,” Joe prompted.

  “All right. But please understand I’m not formally accusing anyone of anything. It’s just that, with so many strange things going on and the loss of our friend in that DC-6B yesterday, a number of us are very worried about whether our aircraft can really be trusted.”

  The beer arrived with a perfunctory thud. The bartender was ambling back to the front of the bar.

  “You’re worried about maintenance?” Joe asked.

  “No, we’re worried that there could be extensive unrecorded use of these planes, and that maybe that extra use has made them much more vulnerable to failure.”

  “Okay.”

  “And,” Clark chuckled ruefully, “I guess I’m also just a bit nervous about being a target.”

  “A target? I don’t understand.”

  “Well, you know, if there happens to be sabotage going on, it’s possible that the crash was caused by someone trying to kill me.”

  “Why would someone want to kill you, Captain?”

  Clark sighed. “Considering you’re FBI, is it safe to assume that nothing I tell you will be turned over to Stein Aviation or its owner or anyone else?”

  “You mean, will your identity be safe? Yes, it will. But you’re not worried that Jerry Stein is watching you, are you?”

  “Not really.”

  “Or secretly flying formation with you in his Lear?”

  A sudden look of puzzlement descended over Clark Maxwell’s face like a dropped veil, and Joe realized too late his mistake.

  “Ah…” Clark began, trying to assess the meaning of an FBI representative suddenly knowing the make of Jerry Stein’s personal aircraft.

  Joe laughed and sat back. “Oh! Sorry. I did some quick research on Jerry Stein, and found him quite a character, and I love aviation, so I was interested in his Lear. Nothing from our files, of course. Just his overall reputation in this business, and through the Internet.”

  “Oh.”

  “Sorry to startle you. Checking up on what someone owns can be important.”

  The veil lifted. “Not a problem.”

  “You were saying? Or rather, I was asking if you had reason to think Mr. Stein was trying to hurt you?”

  “No, I have no direct reason.”

  Clark related the sudden substitution of Ship 84 for Ship 86, and Joe nodded solemnly as if carefully mulling over the details before answering.

  “Well, again, Captain, I’m not a real-life agent as yet, but it seems to me that the crew substitution would be pretty good indication that the company was not trying to get rid of you, since they pulled you off that flight.”

  Clark nodded. “It could be read that way, but I need to tell you why I could actually be someone’s target.” He explained the anonymous article and his shock to find out that apparently a wide variety of people knew he was the writer.

  “I don’t want to sound paranoid, but it’s bound to have angered a few people.”

  Joe was nodding again. “Reminds me of that great poster of W. C. Fields looking over a deck of cards with the legend, ‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.’”

  Maxwell was staring at him in silence, and Joe mentally lashed himself for being too glib.

  “Sorry, Captain. I just have one heck of a memory for cartoons and funny greeting cards and such.”

  “Okay. Look, let me explain something. We fly these planes through hell every day, Agent Michaels, and—”

  “Just call me Randy, please.”

  “All right, Randy. What I was saying, and what you need to know, is that these planes are on the ragged edge all the time. We dive over ridgelines through clouds of smoke and burning gases and rising debris into massive turbulence that knocks us all over the cockpit and puts tremendous stress on the structure. And last year, after the wings came off two different types of airtankers, we all finally found out that there’s no one on the planet who really knows whether or not these airplanes can take what we’re dishing out, whether we’re inspecting them adequately, how to repair cracks, nor even the exact amount of turbulence the average retardant run puts us through. We’ve all been too busy flying them and putting out fires to do the research, and the operators—fewer than ten companies—aren’t eager to pay for anything not absolutely mandated by the FAA or the Forest Service. But over the years, at least we were able to depend on one thing, or so we thought, and that’s how many flight hours these old birds have been flown and where and how they’ve been used. Man, if that assumption is wrong, too, then we’re just expendable test pilots without a cause, and more of us are going to die.”

  Joe thought of pulling out his digital voice recorder and securing Maxwell’s permission to turn it on to give Jerry the precise tenor of the captain’s protests, but handwritten notes would have to do. Montana had a law against recordings obtained under false pretenses, and he didn’t want to spook the big pilot with such a request.

  “Let me get all the details,” Joe replied, “and then the bureau can start looking into whether any laws are being violated. Mind if I take notes?” Joe pulled a small steno pad from his briefcase.

  “No. Of course not. Frankly, I’d be concerned if you didn’t.”

  Chapter 21

  FOREST SERVICE OPERATIONS—

  WEST YELLOWSTONE AIRPORT, SIX-THIRTY P.M.

  Bill Deason leaned toward Clark Maxwell’s ear, speaking low.

  “If this isn’t eerily reminiscent of a World War Two mission briefing, I’ve been watching the wrong movies.”

  Clark laughed and nodded, his eyes on the uniformed member of the U.S. Forest Service standing at the front of the room with a pointer and a projected map covering the wall behind him. The man was thin and perhaps six feet tall, with a small mustache and an ill-fitting uniform that seemed to hang from his lank frame like an afterthought. With a mane of scraggly hair and a sad expression below a pair of permanently startled eyes, he looked more like a living cartoon or an actor sent in for comic relief.

  “Somewhere between Barney Fife and Ichabod Crane, don’tcha think?” Bill asked.

  “Sh-h-h-h!” Clark whispered back, genuinely afraid the man would overhear and have his feelings hurt.

  The atmosphere in the room was mostly somber, but Clark could see a number of the pilots were slipping into the same sense of the surreal; the shock and upset over the loss of Jeff Maze melding with the raised personal stakes in wondering who would be next was creating a suppressed giddiness. He felt like laughing outrageously and crying at the same time, and that made no sense. Worse, it was something you didn’t discuss with another male, and certainly not another pilot—even Bill.

  Virtually all the pilots flying Jerry Stein’s aircraft were arrayed around the interior of Ops, which had been essentially converted to a briefing room for the occasion. The call had gone out at five-thirty P.M. for as many personnel as possible to attend a special Ops briefing as soon as all the aircraft were on the ground. Neither Bill nor Clark could recall a similar event, and curiosity was running high. On top of it, Jerry Stein and representatives of two other companies whose pilots were working out of West Yellowstone wanted the airtanker pilots to stay for a few minutes afterward.

  The pilots, a community of rangy tomcats unable to contain their curiosity, were quietly making bets about everything from a shutdown to an immediate federal takeover.

  Jerry Stein was in the room, standing off to one side and watching quietly. The entire assemblage knew he and his copilot had done yeoman’s duty in the Skycrane into late afternoon, but he was also a qualified airtanker captain, rated to fly the DC-6B and the P-3 Orion. The fact that he wasn’t on the schedule to fly such tankers in the morning had already become
gossip fodder, and it was considered anything but inspiring.

  “There’s a pool on whether he’ll go for the Skycrane or a P-3 in the morning,” one of the pilots had whispered before Jerry opened the briefing.

  “Nothing wrong with the P-3s,” Bill had whispered back. “I’ll lay money on the Skycrane versus a DC-6, though.”

  “Okay, people, can we have your undivided attention now?” Rich Lassiter asked. The Forest Service Operations chief looked alarmingly out of place as he waited uncomfortably for Rich to hand it over to him.

  “Look, tomorrow morning will likely be the busiest this base has ever seen. It’s gonna look like a combat launch out there, and we need to plan for it and talk about it and deal with some crew-duty time issues and the status of the fires.”

  “We already know the status, Rich,” Joel Butler said quietly on the front row. “The forest is on fire. We know it’s serious.”

  Rich looked wounded. He glanced at the Forest Service representative for support, then back at the group.

  “In a nutshell, tomorrow will tell whether we catch these fires or lose them like in 1988. Ed Burch here, of the Forest Service, whom many of you know, has come over from Boise to take command of the air ops, and he wants to lay it out for you which fire is which, what the strategy is, and how we’re going to keep going with the Baron lead planes permanently grounded and a small hurricane of a south wind propelling things.” Rich turned to Burch. “They’re all yours, Ed.”

  Ed Burch nodded, raised a small lavalier microphone to his mouth, and boosted his baritone voice into the room with startling volume from the single-speaker amplifier.

  “You say they’re all mine?” he repeated, looking at Rich, who was nodding, then back at the group. “Now I really am terrified.”

  There were a few small chuckles, but Burch realized the group was far too depressed for humor. He formally introduced himself and launched into a detailed recitation of where the six major fires had begun, the damage they had caused so far, and the latest grim assessment of potential control. Bit by bit the story moved north to the V-shaped valley containing the tiny town of Bryarly.