Out of Season (3 page)
“Gastner.”
“Sir,” Gayle Sedillos said, “Officer Pasquale reported that with binoculars he can see something that looks like it might be wreckage, and he’s on his way to the site.”
“How far off road?”
“He thinks at least three miles, sir. Over north of the Salinas Arroyo fork. He said he’d try to find a route to get him close enough to confirm before dark.”
I glanced at my watch. “Any fire?”
“He says not, sir.”
“Well, he doesn’t have much time. Did you call Jim Bergin at the airport?”
“Yes, sir. Bergin said there was only one aircraft currently aloft in the area, and he’s trying to contact it now.”
“You mean a local flight?” I glanced out past the front doors as the wind scudded up the street.
“Yes, sir. Apparently Philip Camp departed Posadas at sixteen-ten for just a short ride. He hasn’t returned.”
“Phil Camp? That’s Marty Holman’s brother-in-law.”
“Yes, sir. Jim Bergin said that Sheriff Holman went with Camp.”
Linda Real wasn’t finished with her meal, but she’d have to get used to interruptions. I wasn’t sure why I invited her along, other than that it was as good a time as any to see what her instincts were.
She and I headed for the airport, and as we drove up Bustos Avenue toward County Road 43, I could tell by the way she sat, stiff-spined and leaning forward slightly, that she was eager to be doing something other than sitting and waiting for damaged cells to mend.
“Three-ten, PCS.”
I nodded toward the mike. “Take it,” I said.
Linda pulled it out of the bracket and promptly dropped it with a loud whack against the radio console. “Sorry,” she said. “PCS, this is three-ten.”
If Gayle Sedillos was surprised to hear something other than my gruff, monosyllabic radio response, she didn’t let it show in her voice.
“Three-ten, be advised that three-oh-three will be on foot with vehicle disabled. He has a handheld, but it doesn’t have the range to reach the repeater.”
Linda glanced over at me. “Just acknowledge,” I said.
She pressed the mike key and said, “Ten-four, PCS.”
By the time we reached the airport, Jim Bergin had the main hangar open and had pulled his new Cessna 210 onto the apron. The fitful gusts rocked the wings and I grimaced as I parked behind the terminal. It was going to be a rocky ride, even with burrito padding.
“Jim doesn’t have a police radio in the aircraft,” I told Linda, “and the handhelds are useless at any distance and with all the engine noise. We’ll be talking on the aircraft channel, on Unicom, back to the radio here at the airport. I want you on this end, and then you can patch back to Gayle by phone. All right?”
“Yes, sir,” Linda said.
“Just transfer the messages word for word. Don’t get creative.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bergin trotted over toward the car, glancing at his watch as he did so. Short, wiry, and intense, Bergin had eked out a living at the Posadas airport for twenty years. If the place had had to depend on transient av-gas customers for its economic survival, it would have been dead long before. And if Bergin’s survival depended on prompt reimbursement by the county for flights like this one, he’d starve while he waited for the government check.
“I’m kinda worried, Bill,” Bergin said as we shook hands. “They took off about two hours ago, just to do a little local sight-seeing. No radio response. You say one of the deputies has wreckage spotted?”
“He thinks he does, Jim. We don’t know for sure.” I shrugged. “It could be anything. Holman and his brother-in-law might have decided to skip over to Cruces or something like that.”
He shook his head. “I checked to make sure. They didn’t do that.” He looked up at the sky. Thin mares’ tails stretched out from the southwest, their tips shredded by winds aloft. A gust ripped across the apron, pinging sand against the side of the Cessna. “This ain’t going to be fun,” he said.
“Let’s get with it,” I said, and added, “You know Linda Real. She’s going to sit the radio down here, if that’s all right with you.”
“Sure.” He waved a hand toward the mobile home that served as the terminal. “It’s open.”
When Bergin had predicted that the flight wouldn’t be a pleasure ride, I’d chalked that up to his cautious nature. As far as I was concerned, the less time I spent in an airplane, the better, regardless of the weather.
The 210 kicked into life with a hearty rumble, and between its vibration and the constant buffeting of the wind against its flanks, the aircraft felt like a living thing.
We taxied out and I looked down and watched sand and desert litter stream past the tires. The gusts were quartering across the tarmac, and Bergin kept full aileron correction cranked in to discourage the windward wing from lifting.
At the end of the taxiway, he let the Cessna weathervane, and we parked with its nose into the wind while he completed his checklist. When he was satisfied, he plucked the mike off the console.
“Posadas Unicom, this is Cessna four-niner Bravo November Mike departing the active straight-out to the east.”
Linda’s reply was immediate. “Ten-four, November Mike.”
Jim looked over at me. “Ten-four?” he shouted with a grin. “That’s one we don’t hear much.” He let the Cessna idle forward onto the runway, and with the yoke full over to the left to keep the wing down into the wind, he advanced the throttle. The turbocharged engine bellowed and we accelerated hard.
The little terminal building was about one third of the way down the seven-thousand-foot runway, and we were airborne long before that. The first updraft slammed the aircraft, and Bergin kept the climb angle moderate, building speed. I looked down just in time to see the landing gear on my side flop backward and disappear, and for a moment, my heart stopped.
“Where’s the site?” Bergin shouted.
“You know where the Salinas Arroyo forks? Just south of Finnegan’s place?”
Bergin nodded and banked to the north. I would have liked to have had a big, padded grab bar across my lap, like on one of those carnival rides. I sucked in my gut and yanked the shoulder harness tighter, then clamped my right hand on the dashboard.
As we cleared the mesa rim, an updraft kicked the Cessna so hard that we gained a thousand feet. Beyond the mesa, the wind was quartering from the northeast, and we flew crabbed sideways, the piñon and juniper scrub flowing by under my window.
What had turned into a major undertaking for Deputy Pasquale was a matter of minutes for us. The land sloped away from Cat Mesa, leveling out onto the flat, bleak prairie that stretched to the north, broken here and there by sharp outcroppings and vertical lava plugs.
Once clear of mesa influence, Bergin kept a thousand feet of air between us and the scrub below. The occasional herds of cattle ignored us. I could see dust and manure mixed into brown billows, kicked up where the cattle congregated for the night. The earth was bare, ribboned with narrow cattle trails that radiated out from the water tanks and windmills that dotted the landscape.
Off to the west, a clutter of buildings marked the southern corner of Johnny and Edwin Boyd’s place. The Boyds’ Circle JEB Ranch was huge, extending up to the patch of federal lands that split the county line to the north. It was country where ranchers really liked their neighbors…at a distance.
After leaving the village of Posadas, County Road 43 snaked north this way and that, up and around the east end of Cat Mesa. Crossing the ranch land north of the mesa, the road avoided the trap of Salinas Arroyo, just to the west.
Without the wind, the visibility would have been unlimited and someone with sharp eyes could have seen the evening sun wink off Tom Pasquale’s patrol unit the moment the mesa was cleared. But we were flying through tan soup. The elegant, sophisticated Cessna felt like a 1953 Chevy pickup being flogged up a boulder-strewn wash.
“Lots of fun, eh?” Bergin shouted. He wasn’t grinning at my discomfort. “There’s a supply of bags in the pocket behind your seat, if you need ’em.”
“That’s not going to be a problem,” I shouted back as another air pocket shook my teeth and wrenched my spine. “I’m going to need a chiropractor when we’re done. I don’t understand why they went flying in this kind of weather, anyway.”
“Hell of a good question.” He turned to scan a small hummock of oak trees that rocked by under the left wing.
The narrow strip of pavement that the county claimed as Highway 43 drifted to the northeast as the Salinas Arroyo picked up several tributaries. Bergin rested one hand on the dash and pointed straight ahead. “That’s the fork,” he shouted.
The Salinas widened and then, for no apparent reason, divided, with one tine swerving almost due west and the other running due north. Left in the middle was rumpled, inhospitable country with no easy access except for a handful of rough, two-track ranch roads. The main road to the Boyd ranch, County 9010, wandered west from its intersection with the pavement of County Road 43, crossing the Salinas and several other arroyos.
There were no bridges—arroyos formed and filled on their own vague schedules. When one got in the way, the two-track just plunged down one side and up the other, maybe with a little touch-up from a bulldozer if the arroyo was deep enough. As they crossed, ranchers got used to glancing upstream to make sure that a wall of water wasn’t shooting down on them after a vagrant cloud had dropped its load.
Tom Pasquale had driven almost three miles west on County 9010, paralleling the smooth-sloping back of Cat Mesa. Then he had turned off the road, heading northwest across open prairie in what must have been a jouncing, kidney-bruiser of a ride.
After less than a half mile, another arroyo had blocked his path and he had tried to find his way across at what looked like a benign spot. His Bronco sat axle-deep in the sand, a target for the next rainstorm.
We flashed overhead, and Bergin initiated a sweeping turn to the east. I keyed the handheld and kept it against my lips when I spoke.
“Three-oh-three, three-ten.”
By holding the speaker against my left ear, I could hear Pasquale’s response clearly. “I’m about a mile and a half due west of where the unit’s parked,” he said. “Right off your right wing the way you’re turning now.”
Bergin continued the turn and then pulled back the throttle and lowered a notch of flaps. It was like slowing an old pickup from third gear to second…not much improvement, but some.
Even if I had known exactly where Pasquale was, I doubt that I could have seen him. But Bergin did, and he dipped the wings sharply. “He’s right by that fence line.” He pointed, and I would have been more comfortable if he’d kept his hands on the yoke. I didn’t care where Pasquale was—he wasn’t the target of the search.
The radio crackled. “I think the site is about a mile or two to the northwest,” Pasquale shouted. “I’m going to make my way over there. Let me know after you take a look.”
Bergin peeled out of his tight turn and the engine sighed a few RPMs slower. He extended the flaps another few degrees. “Don’t want to go too slow,” he yelled at me.
I couldn’t have agreed more. “Or too low,” I said.
We flew west, methodically bucking the wind, until we’d passed the main residence of the Boyd ranch. It was set into the southeast-facing slope of a hill, with a fair-sized collection of outbuildings dotted around it.
“You’d think maybe the Boyds would have seen or heard something if a plane went down this close to their place.” Bergin shrugged and reached over to twist the throttle a quarter turn. “’Course, in this country, you just never know.”
He banked the plane nice and easy and we started back east, flying a mile north and parallel to our first pass. Back and forth, east and west, we tracked, moving a mile farther north each time, Bergin skillfully playing the wind.
On the fifth pass, when the Boyd ranch was hidden behind the long swell of a cattle-trail-scarred hill, Bergin suddenly stood the Cessna up on one wing, pushing in the throttle as he did so.
I had a view of ground out the left window and solid sky to the right. I braced myself and an inadvertent “Whoa!” escaped. Bergin ignored me and continued his tight spiral, throttle to the firewall and eyes glued out the side window. Finally he leveled off.
“Something down there, all right. Pretty good scatter.” He pulled the throttle back and we sank into the wind. Five hundred feet above the prairie, he added throttle, picked up some speed and turned steeply again, reversing course. “Right over the nose,” he shouted. “I’m going to make a pass with it on your side.”
The Cessna slowed and Bergin tracked a straight line, letting the aircraft gradually sink. What from on high had looked like flat prairie now took on form and threat. Ahead of us, a swell of rock and scrub rose up, and if Bergin knew what he was doing, we’d skim over the trees with about a hundred feet to spare. I concentrated on watching the ground.
The northeast side of the rise was littered with junk in a long scatter, as if a giant had dumped a load of metal trash that winked in the late-afternoon sunlight. As we passed overhead, I saw several pieces tumbling in the wind, to be grabbed eventually by stunted junipers or black sage.
“That’s it!” Bergin shouted and then added, “That looks like the aft fuselage and part of the empennage.” He pushed in the throttle and we headed east, giving ourselves room for another turn.
This time even I could see one large piece on the side of the slope, resting amid a welter of torn metal. It was white with a blue stripe running under what was left of the registration markings.
“One more,” Bergin said and turned to cross the site from north to south. “Let me see if I can make out the markings.” From a hundred feet away, it wasn’t difficult, even passing by at ninety miles an hour or more. “I can see the GVM,” Bergin shouted, and leveled out. “And that’s a Bonanza. Philip Camp was registered out of Calgary, Canada. A lot of times they don’t use numbers up there. Just letters. If my memory’s right, his registration was George Victor Michael Alpha.”