The Spirit of Steamboat Read online

  Static. “Raider Lima Charlie, you have snowplows two thousand feet down the runway!”

  My ex-boss and mentor pulled off his earphones and tossed them behind him, bouncing them off my shoulder. “ . . . Asshole.” He glanced back at me. “Pump that handle; pressure has dropped and the nose gear is not down.”

  As I clutched the handle with both fists and resumed pumping like a metronome, the third light on the instrument panel started to flicker. Ahead, you could periodically see the flashing approach lights of Stapleton, but as Lucian had predicted, the gusting winds were playing havoc with Steamboat’s stability. They pressed against the fuselage, and when they lightened, the craft was flung to the right before the two pilots could correct it. Gusts thrashed us the other times, and it was looking more and more like we were trying to thread a needle with a sixty-eight-foot wingspan.

  The Raider reached down and made more adjustments, and I knew we were committed. The engine to the left sputtered and kicked like its brother, and all I could pray was that the thing would hold out for another two minutes.

  Lucian’s voice broke over the intermittent noise. “Looks like we’re going in on a wing, a prayer, and possibly a dead stick.”

  The motors labored and I know it was my imagination, but I kept hearing them sputter in agonizing death, the half-silence in the cockpit deafening as the arctic wind whistled around us like avionic ghosts fleeing a sinking ship. The only remaining sound as I looked up at the lucky charm hanging from the canopy was a distant and determined drumming.

  “Keep pumping that handle; just because the runway is solid ice doesn’t mean we don’t need hydraulics to keep that nose gear down.”

  Pumping like a fiend, I took a chance and looked up through the windshield but couldn’t see anything. We were in a sudden snow whiteout. There was a vague sense that the world outside the cockpit was lopsided, confirmed when Lucian adjusted the yoke and I felt the wingtips dip, rise, and then straighten. “I can’t see anything.”

  His hands stayed steady on the controls, the VOR needle centered on the final approach course. “Me neither, but it’s gotta be out there somewhere.” He glanced at his copilot. “I don’t want to come in too low, and we have to keep our speed up in these gusts; we’re gonna be a little fast when we touch down. The wind is right off the nose so that’s gonna help but the brakes will do no good on the ice. After we get down, when I holler NOW, I want you to stuff that left foot of yours forward and give us full left rudder; at the same time I’m gonna goose the right engine spinning us around to the left. When we get going backward give us full right rudder to stop the spin and I’ll set full power on the left. When we come to a stop I’ll shut ol’ Steamboat down.”

  She nodded her head, the situation having robbed her of words.

  I pulled my hat down tighter. “We’re only going to get one chance at this, right?”

  “One’s all we need.” He glanced at Julie again. “Toots, give me altimeter readings, would you?”

  She studied the instruments as he continued to peer into the blowing snow that kept giving the impression that we were flying sideways. “Five hundred feet.”

  He smiled. “Well, let’s hope we make it over the Purina Dog Chow plant.”

  “Two hundred feet.”

  Suddenly the blinking lights at the end of the runway leapt into partial view, along with the vertical white stripes stretching into a vanishing point ahead. “It’s there.”

  “I see it.” He eased the yoke back just a little until I felt a shudder go through Steamboat as he played out the flaps on the verge of stalling, and then eased the nose forward, just a touch. “Damn it, we’re too steep.”

  Depth perception was difficult with the whiteout, and the situation wasn’t made any easier by the blowing drifts that intruded onto the runway pavement along the edge lights.

  Another gust chose that precise moment to broadside us, but Lucian had been prepared and expertly adjusted the flight pattern so that we were now passing over the blinking landing lights at the end of the strip. “I was training in Amarillo back in the days before weather avoidance radar and we got hit by a Gulf Coast storm. The antenna got fused by lightning, hail damage, heavy turbulence, snow and dust that made for this brown slush on the windshield, and I gotta tell you, I was ready to make brown slush in my Army Air Corps junior-aviator pants.”

  There was a mild thump, almost as if plumping a pillow.

  “All my instructor said was, ‘Buck up, things are going to get worse.’” He glanced back at me. “And they did.”

  I looked out the windshield and could still see nothing but a momentary flurry of drifting snow and the edge lights. “When are we going to touch down?”

  He smiled and then blew out his breath. “We already did.”

  Julie turned and looked at him in wonderment, shaking her head, a gasping cry coming from her mouth.

  It was at that precise moment that the front of a five-yard, dual-axle plow appeared about a thousand feet in front of us, the blinking emergency lights flashing, the vehicle stuck in a drift completely straddling the runway.

  I watched in horror as it looked like all the work, all the chances we’d taken to get the little girl here were about to go up in a spiral of snow, wasted and useless.

  As if on cue and without hesitation, Lucian hollered. “NOW!”

  I’d forgotten the old Raider’s instructions, but Julie hadn’t and stamped her left foot down in full rudder as Lucian slammed the right throttle forward and the Wright-2600-92, fourteen-cylinder, air-cooled, radial engine roared like the lion on the old Raider’s patch, causing Steamboat to spin left on all three of her wheels and seem to kick backward like a bucking horse at the snowplow that was all of a sudden behind us.

  Lucian swapped throttles, strongly bringing in the left engine as the right one sputtered to a stop, out of gas. Julie rapidly kicked the rudder pedals in an attempt to keep up. Steamboat started a swerve back to the right, but Lucian drove the yoke forward and cut the throttles as the second engine coughed and died for the last time. This maneuver was not as gentle as the landing and the gyroscope-like spin caused Steamboat to canter to the left as we slid along, slipping on the portion of the runway that we had just come from.

  His jaw was set. “I hope that’s the only one of those sons-a-bitches out here.”

  As we slid off the side of the runway I grabbed the back of both their seats; the nose suddenly dropped, and it felt like the landing gear in the front must have collapsed underneath us, the nose scraping concrete. Steamboat lurched to one side and the terrible grinding noise subsided, but as we began sluicing along on a bed of snow at a good clip, the lights of something else wavered and shone in the powdered mess.

  She slowed, struggling to get back up on her two good legs, but the momentum of the maneuver continued to push us forward toward the flashing lights ahead. Both Lucian and Julie were frozen at the controls, incapable of doing anything that might have an effect on our outcome. Like a train wreck in slow motion, a phalanx of snowplows bloomed out of the snow, five of them running in tandem, straight toward us.

  Seeing the plane, they locked on their brakes, and I watched as they grew closer. The grinding noise returned as Lucian attempted to navigate the stricken B-25 onto the plowed portion of the runway, scouring away speed as the bomber slowly, ever so bone-grindingly slowly, slid to a stop. All of us rocked back and forth as Steamboat did a quarter turn and halted, her wingtip only inches from the blade of the foremost truck.

  I watched as the old Raider stared at the giant plows, their yellow lights intermittently racing across his face. “Jesus H. Christ, if that don’t get your blood pumping, nothing will.” He removed his glasses and then reached up again to fondle the lucky horse charm that he had hung back on the escape hatch, and then he glanced at Julie, who had yet to move. “I could use a drink, how ’bout you, Toots?”

  The medical personnel from Children’s Hospital assisted Isaac in transferring the girl from the c
rippled bomber into the waiting EMT van parked under the shelter of Steamboat’s wing.

  The surrounding vehicles provided a kind of additional windbreak as they lowered the gurney from the hatchway, careful not to upset the bubble that held the child.

  I caught the doc’s arm and asked, “How is she doing?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, but at least now we’re going to find out.”

  “I’ll meet you at the hospital.”

  He nodded, but said nothing more.

  Lucian and Julie joined me as the med-techs opened the back of the van; Mrs. Oda hovered next to the gurney, breaking her vigilance for only a second. Her eyes scanned the three of us and then settled on Lucian before reaching out and grabbing his hands and kissing them. “Arigato.”

  Embarrassed, he broke away and gestured toward Julie and me. “Well, I had some help . . .”

  Once again, she grabbed his hands between her own and kissed them. “Arigato, arigato.”

  He nodded, all the braggadocio, smart-aleck remarks, and flyboy witticisms lodged in his throat as she and Isaac followed Amaterasu into the van; the doors closed and they were swept away in a slipstream of powdery snow. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  We stood there for a moment, watching the van’s emergency lights fade into the storm as a very large and officious-looking man in a set of insulated coveralls marched over in Sorels and looked at the underside of the bomber’s wing. “All right, is she out of here?”

  I turned and looked at him, the frigid wind blowing the collar of my coat against my grizzly, blood-smeared face. “Excuse me?”

  He was wearing a trooper hat with the flaps folded down around his round face, which did little to disguise his considerable bulk. “The crispy-critter; did they get her out of this thing?”

  I felt coolness in my face and steadiness in my hands. “Yep, she’s gone.”

  He nodded and then yelled over his shoulder. “All right, let’s get this piece of crap off my runway. Pull those blades over here and push this junk heap into the barrow ditch!”

  I was just starting to move forward when something flew in from the side and slammed him against the still-functioning portion of the landing gear, causing him to bounce off the giant tire, slip on the slush at our feet, and then seat him on his ample ass.

  With her cap pushed back on her head, her blond hair escaping from underneath, Julie Luehrman stood over him with fists at the ready. “You don’t touch this plane with anything but the kindest intent.”

  The ground-crew chief looked at Lucian and me, but we were staying out of it.

  Our copilot pointed toward the main terminal and at the lights above. “In ten minutes, I’m going to be sitting at the window of the 38th Parallel Bar, and I’ll be sitting up there all night, watching what it is you do with our plane—and you better not put one more scratch on it. Do you read me?”

  He looked at us again, but the return look I gave him let him know that his life was in his own hands. He paused for a second more and then hurriedly responded, “Yes, ma’am.”

  Julie stood there for a moment and then nodded and looked back at Lucian before throwing her flight bag over her shoulder and starting off. “C’mon, I’ll buy you a drink.” She turned and looked at him. “And stop calling me Toots.”

  Knowing an opportunity when he saw one, he scurried off after her but yelled back, “I told you, something happens to men and machines in these kind’a situations; I guess it happens with women, too.” From the darkness, he added, “Hey, how are we going to get home?”

  I raised a hand to the side of my mouth and yelled after him, “We’ll find a way!”

  From out of the darting snowflakes, the reply came. “We always do, Troop!”

  I lowered a hand to the crew chief and helped him up.

  Gaining back some of his dignity, he brushed a little of the snow from his coveralls and then glanced up at the terminal lights. “Think she means it?”

  I pulled my cowboy hat down a little tighter onto my head and shrugged my sheepskin coat a little higher on my shoulders in preparation for the trudge across the runway, then leaned in over him so that he could get a good look at the blood dried in my mustache, my nose, and the wadding therein. “I wouldn’t test her, if I were you.”

  I walked from under the wing toward the front of the aircraft and paused at the nose of the fuselage to reach up and pat the golden hooves of the silver plane. “Good girl, gooood girl . . .”

  I’d gotten one more look at her through the windowed entrance of the ICU before a formidable nurse stepped between me and the swinging doors. “Are you Walt Longmire, one of the sheriffs that flew that poor little girl down here in this blizzard?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She gestured toward the nurses’ station. “I think your wife is on line two.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “She doesn’t sound too happy.”

  I followed her back to the intersection of two hallways and stared at the receiver lying on the counter like a loaded gun. Picking it up, the nurse punched a button and then made herself scarce. “Hello?”

  “You made it?”

  “We did.” I glanced up at the clock on the wall behind the counter. “It’s two o’clock in the morning; what are you doing up?”

  There was a pause. “Waiting for my husband to call me.”

  “I’m sorry, Martha.” I sighed. “We got to the hospital a while ago, but I’ve been filling out forms and trying to find an interpreter and . . .”

  “How is she?”

  “I don’t know; it’s up to these guys now.”

  I could almost hear her nodding. “You did everything you could.”

  “Yep.”

  Another pause. “Henry stopped by late with his traditional ravioli and a bottle of really good wine.” She chuckled. “We didn’t drink it. And, he wanted to know if you want him to drive down to Denver when they open the roads and give all of you a ride home.”

  “That’s all right; I’m sure the skies will be clear long before the roads are.”

  “Rick called from the airport and said that Julie copiloted you guys down there?”

  “Yeah, she has two legs.” I thought about the incident on the runway. “And I guess she’s formed quite an attachment to Steamboat.”

  “Who?”

  “The airplane.”

  “Oh.”

  I leaned against the counter, luxuriating in her voice. “How’s the punk?”

  “Asleep in bed, where all good punks should be.” I listened as she adjusted the phone in the crook of her neck and wished I were there. She took a breath. “Henry says he can run me up to Billings for that doctor’s appointment this Friday, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “It’s nothing; I just want to get it checked out.”

  I still said nothing.

  “Look, big guy, with the lifestyle you entertain I’ll outlive you by a wide margin—count on it.”

  I could feel a heat building behind my eyes. “I do.”

  Children’s Hospital in Denver was a lot bigger than Durant Memorial back in Wyoming, so the nurse was able to find me a sofa to sleep on in the lounge. I flew through my dreams that night, slipping and sliding on the wind like a giant, armor-clad bronc. There were no engine noises, though, just the cleansing sound of the wind slipping over my riveted, aluminum skin—along with the thundering of drums and horse hoofs.

  I wasn’t alone there in the cloudless sky; there was another ship flying along beside me, smaller and more maneuverable—wing-girl of my dreams.

  Lucian showed up at about five-thirty, drunk as a monkey and escorted by two Delta pilots, one of whom was carrying the Raider’s prosthetic leg, and a Denver city police officer who had volunteered for the perilous journey to the hospital after hearing what the old pilot had done. They apologized for his condition, but said everyone there had insisted on buying him drinks until he was legless.

&nbs
p; After seating him on my sofa in the lounge and seeing the star on my chest, the pilots handed me the leg and scurried out into a dawn that was struggling to rise in a full-blown Rocky Mountain blizzard.

  The patrolman studied the leg and then me. “Are all Wyoming sheriffs certifiably insane?”

  I answered in the affirmative, thanked him for delivering Lucian and all his parts, and then joined the old pilot on the sofa as the Denver patrolman chatted with the nurses.

  “Where’s Julie?”

  His eyes refused to focus. “Who?”

  “Toots.”

  He nodded and batted my words away with his hand. “Couldn’t hunt with the big dogs, so she got a hotel room over at the airport—asked for one with a view of the runways; got one for us, too, but I figured you’d be here.”

  I nodded and brushed some of the melting snow from his hat and leather coat. “Is this your original flight jacket?”

  He picked at a hole in the elastic inner cuff and then found his bobbling attention drawn to the lion patch. “Thirty-Seventh Bombardment Squadron.” A finger came up and popped the felt surface of the vintage patch. “My ol’ squadron.” He said it again, reiterating the information. “My ol’ squadron . . . A lot of ’em are dead now.” He glanced around as if they might still be there, if he looked hard enough. “Swam to shore in it; copilot Frank died in the Jap prison camp in China . . . Hell, sixteen little ol’ planes with one ton of bombs apiece—by the end of the war they were sendin’ out five hundred planes a mission with ten tons of bombs apiece; then they finished it off with two planes and two bombs . . . Taught them Japs a lesson, though.”

  I stood there studying the drunk man for a moment and then placed his leg beside him, took off his hat, and started to pull a blanket over him.

  His hand came up and pushed mine away. “How’s the girl?”