The Spirit of Steamboat Read online

  As I walked past the administrative office and down the hallway, I shook my hat against my leg and stopped long enough to get an indication of where the sound was coming from within the enormous building. As I looked around, I noticed that there was a large aeronautical chart pinned to the wall that had expanding graduated circles drawn around the Durant Airport like a bull’s-eye.

  A long, narrow, tape-like string marked in ten-mile increments was attached to the chart with a nail on Durant as a center point. I grabbed the end of it in my wet fingers and stretched it out along a path directly to Denver, noting the reading—28.5 tick marks, 150 degrees at 285 miles as the crow flies.

  The overhead heaters blasted in an attempt to keep the temperature in the tin building over fifty degrees. I could still see my breath as I headed in and ducked under the wing of a Cessna, around the tail of an old Navion, past the fuselages of a Maule and a vintage Beechcraft, and around the engine of another much larger plane that overshadowed the entire rear of the hangar.

  Rick was the airport manager and was watching as his friend and protégé, wearing an elastic headlamp over her ball cap, drilled holes in an angular piece of aluminum. He pointed to a spot on the metal where Julie was to drill the next hole, and even with the vague scent of high-octane aviation fuel in the air, the ever-present cigar hung from the young man’s lip. Julie shook her head, and the now full-time hangar rat smiled as I approached the rolling worktable. “Fat pilots—over time they bend the seat rails.”

  “Then I shouldn’t fly.”

  “You haven’t got any fat on you.”

  “I have tendencies—vitamin R—otherwise known as Rainier beer.”

  Julie smiled and Rick snorted and pointed at me with his cigar. “From what I heard, you don’t like flying, period.”

  “I don’t—especially helicopters and especially since Vietnam; besides, I barely have enough fingers on one hand to count how many times I’ve been out with the Durant search and rescue team looking for a crashed helicopter.”

  “Then what are you doin’ at an airport?”

  “Waiting on a helicopter.”

  “Yeah, I heard.” He laughed and leaned both elbows on the rolling cart, causing it to move; Julie gave him a dirty look. “Hell, those eggbeaters are twice as dangerous as a fixed wing.” He smirked at her. “They have thousands of moving parts and are prone to behaving badly. When the rotors quit, watch those chopper pilots really start to sweat.”

  “What are the chances of this crew getting refueled and heading on down to Colorado?”

  “None.” He stabbed the cigar back in the corner of his mouth as if it were a dart on a corkboard. “The runways at Denver Stapleton are open but fighting drifting snow and Chinook winds. Julie and I checked the forecast and the SIGMET/AIRMETs at Sheridan Flight Service, and in a little over an hour that front is going to hit and there isn’t anything going to fly—not even Santa Claus.”

  “The medevac can’t outrun it?”

  Koehmstedt guffawed around his cheroot. “It’s a fast-moving cold front coming from the northwest. Even if they get out of here before the front really hits Durant, it will move in from the west and block the chopper’s route south of here toward Denver. At best, that thing they’re coming in on will do a hundred and thirty, maybe a bit better with a tailwind, sure not fast enough to get far enough south before the front blocks its path.”

  With her free hand Julie tipped her bright yellow Pilot Cub cap back and plucked off her safety glasses, revealing a set of ferocious, blue-yonder eyes. “Helicopters are actually better in most rescue situations because they’re more maneuverable, but they’re not good in high winds and they don’t handle icing well.” Julie waved the drill in my direction. “Can’t compete with a fixed wing in speed, either.”

  I glanced around the hangar. “Do we have anything here that’ll make it?”

  Rick laughed. “Not only no, but hell no.”

  Julie set the drill down, switched off the headlamp, and stuffed the safety glasses in the front pocket of her blue Carhartt coveralls. “A pilot flying these little guys would lose control and get ripped apart in those conditions, Walt.” She studied the small planes and then shook her head. “Most of these can’t go as fast as the chopper anyway; besides, where are you going to put the gurney, equipment, and medical staff?”

  I could feel my breath getting shorter as my options ran out, and I leaned against the back of the propeller of the plane that overshadowed us. I slipped a little, looked down, and noticed that I was standing in a puddle of oil that must have originated from the big plane’s engine exhaust stack. First my hat and now my boots. Quickly stepping aside, I looked up at the stained surface of the plane, a dulled silver, with rust that elicited little confidence. “What about this one?”

  They both shook their heads, Rick the first to speak. “Oh, Sheriff, you’re really grabbing at straws. This is an old VB-25J VIP transport that was Eisenhower’s private plane during the D-Day invasion. It ended up in the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona and was sold as surplus.”

  “How’d it get here?”

  Pushing the rolling cart back in Rick’s direction, Julie shimmied to the side. “A company out of Tucson bought it to use for grasshopper and sagebrush spray contracts along the foot of the Bighorns and on into Nebraska, but it had leaky hydraulics.”

  Julie moved closer, placing a hand on the landing gear. “The company tried to fix her, but on one trip it had a serious hydraulic failure and the pilot landed here. The plane ran off the edge of the runway, plowing grass and tumbleweeds, finally coming to a stop after damaging her nosewheel.”

  Rick tossed a dirty rag onto the cart and picked out a clean one. “The contracts fell through, the company went out of business, and the plane was abandoned. After a few years the county sold it to Hawkins/Powers out of Greybull to use for slurry bombing forest fires.”

  Rick looked over at me rubbing the soles of my boots on the concrete. “They’re good guys—even hired Julie last season as a copilot.” Rick offered me the clean rag. “Takes guts to hire a woman in this business.”

  Julie shrugged. “They had the old spray tank removed from the bomb bay so they can put in one of their new lightweight designs, but the original doors are still there. We fixed the nosewheel, even cleaned the bird’s nests out of the air intakes so I think the heaters work. The leaky hydraulic valves still need fixed, but the fuel tanks are solid as long as you don’t fill them over four hundred fifty gallons.”

  I glanced up at the large plane. “What happens if you put more than four hundred and fifty gallons in it?”

  “She leaks fuel like a cow pissing on a flat rock.” Rick took some matches out of his pocket and tried to relight his cigar. “The ole bird is stuck here till somebody can come over and fly her out.”

  I began studying the antique, unable to give up my last straw. “How fast is it?”

  Rick drew his face back as if I’d smacked him. “Close to three hundred miles an hour, but like she said, the hydraulics are shot and there isn’t anybody to fly her.”

  I turned to Julie. “You’re a pilot, right?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not type rated in something like this. I mean I got checked out as a copilot and have my commercial certificate with one hundred hours—two hundred and fifty in various single engines as a flight instructor—but nothing like this. It takes an incredible amount of training and hours to get certified on a plane this size, Walt.”

  I stepped back and ran my eyes over the lines of the thing, taking in the twin engines, the faded air force insignia, and the massive width of the wingspan. “What are the chances that the pilot of the helicopter might be able to fly it?”

  “None.” Rick’s turn to shake his head. “Hell, nobody this side of the Bighorns flies these things anymore; they’re antiques.”

  I continued to look at the beast, and as I stood there with my hands in my pockets, I tipped my hat back and studied the numbers on the s
ide of one of the tail fins—34030. My eyes played across the length of the thing, its aerodynamics and sheer bulk making it appear like a whale shark swimming with guppies. I walked closer and noticed the unusual nose art—a bucking horse and rider in faded brown and gold, the name spiraled across the side. “Why does this plane look familiar?”

  Rick drew in on his cigar and blew smoke under the wide wings. “It’s a VB-25J, a transport version of the old Mitchell B-25s—you know, one of the most used bombers of the Second World War—but I’m telling you, other than maybe the crews over in Greybull, nobody in these parts can fly the damn thing.

  I pulled at my sideburns and continued staring at the plane as thoughts crazier than the wild Wyoming wind whipping the outside of the hangar crashed against the insides of my skull.

  “I know somebody who can.”

  The Euskadi Bar in downtown Durant was the place where I’d first been offered the job as deputy, and the man who had hired me still frequented the place. Lucian Connally was a shrewd poker player who rarely lost and was sitting at a card table in his favorite chair with a large stack of chips in front of him. During his time as sheriff, he kept his games at the Euskadi low stakes and friendly, but on a few occasions he would put someone in charge of the office and take a sabbatical, as he was fond of saying, spending a day or two playing high-stakes poker in a casino across either the Montana or South Dakota lines.

  The three other men at the table tonight—Tom Koltiska, Gerald Holman, and John Buell—turned to look at the Ferg and me as we came through the door. Lucian paused, his Old Rip Van Winkle bourbon in midair. “Well, looky here, if it ain’t Frick and Frack—you boys run out of crosswalks?”

  I slapped the glass out of his hand, sending it and the expensive bourbon tumbling across the table’s felted surface.

  “Jesus H. Christ!”

  “How many of those have you had?”

  He made a face. “Two.”

  I reached across the bar and grabbed Jerry Aranzadi, the Basque bartender, by his shirtfront. “How many?”

  “Three, he’s had three.”

  I swiveled my face around and the brims of our hats met. “Can you fly?”

  Now he really looked confused, at least I hoped that’s what it was. “What?”

  “Can you fly? I’ve got a Flight For Life chopper coming in from Billings, and I need somebody to outrun this storm and fly them the rest of the way to Denver.”

  He looked past me and studied the blowing snow outside the warm glow of the bar. “In this crap, you’ve got to be joking.”

  “I’m not.”

  He stared past me at the whistling snow shooting past the plate-glass windows like miniature banshees doing drive-bys in search of souls. He shook his head. “Can’t be done.”

  I looked back at Jerry, remembering I still had hold of him. “Have you got any coffee?”

  “Yes.”

  I turned to the Ferg. “Get my thermos out of my truck, would you?” He did as I said while the bartender grabbed a mug and the pot from the burner on the bar back and poured Lucian a jolt of joe. “The chopper will be here in twenty minutes with a girl in it—a little girl that’s burned and won’t survive the night without transport to Denver. They’re fueling and getting the plane ready as we speak.”

  “What kind of plane? You can’t fly just anything in this stuff.”

  I smiled down at him. “Trust me, I found you one.”

  The old sheriff downed almost half the coffee in one gulp. “Anybody checked the weather along the way or filed a flight plan so we can pick up a clearance with Salt Lake?”

  “Denver, not Salt Lake.”

  His mouth stiffened. “Till you get nearly past the VOR at Crazy Woman, you’re still going to be under the auspices of Salt Lake air traffic control center, then Denver—so I’ll ask again, has anybody filed a flight plan?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He slugged down the rest of his coffee and slammed the mug on the table. “For the sheriff of this damn county, you sure don’t seem to know a lot.”

  “What’s a VOR?”

  He shook his head. “Very high frequency Omnidirectional Range, a two-phase 360-degree signal by which you navigate the damn plane.” He shook his head and repeated. “You sure as hell don’t know much.”

  The Ferg reappeared with my Stanley thermos, the one that Martha had given me for my birthday with a sticker that Cady had cut out that read DRINKING FUEL in capital letters, and Jerry Aranzadi immediately began filling it. I dragged Lucian up by the shoulders and started him toward the door. “I do know I’ve got to cut you off and get you in the air, flyboy.”

  —

  By the time we got back up to the airport the chopper had landed, and Rick and Julie were rapidly transferring the patient into the relative warmth of the hangar along with an EMT and the victim’s grandmother.

  Isaac Bloomfield was speaking with both of them while Rick conferred with the helicopter pilot by the door. We stormed past and then turned to look at the pale man in the jumpsuit, his hands firmly planted in his underarms. “No way, we barely got in here with our lives; anybody that goes back up in this is looking to be spread from here to Omaha in pieces no bigger than a quarter.”

  I swung around and faced him. “Are you certified on a multiengine?”

  He looked up at me, his eyes flashing the defiance of the fearful. “No, I’m not.” He was still sweating from the exertion of the flight. “And even if I was, I wouldn’t be going up in these conditions.” He ran a hand through his thick hair. “I’m telling you, people are going to die if you try it.”

  I glanced at the small, intubated body on the ventilated gurney as they wheeled it underneath the bomber. “Well, I know for sure that one of us will if we don’t.”

  Isaac joined the Ferg and me as Lucian wandered to our left, deftly sidestepping the puddle of engine oil that had dripped from the large plane’s exhaust stacks and had shanghaied me earlier. “The grandmother indicated to me that she’s willing to try it.” The doc gestured toward the unmoving man by the doorway. “But the EMT keeps talking about insurance and says he’ll only go if the helicopter pilot does.”

  I glanced at the man, giving him just one more chance. “Please.”

  His head dropped, and he looked at his folded arms. “I told you, I don’t know how to fly that thing; it should be in a museum or a scrap yard somewhere.” He shook his head, steadfast. “You guys aren’t pilots, so you don’t know; we barely made it in here with our lives and it’s doing nothing but getting worse. Nobody in their right mind would fly in this weather.”

  I glanced behind me at the short man who was standing under the wing and drinking a second mug of coffee, his eyes running over the sleek lines of the medium bomber like a long-lost lover. “You could be right.”

  I walked over to the spot where my old boss, the man whose job I’d taken only a few months earlier, albeit with his approval, stood under the shadow of the vintage aircraft.

  I could only imagine the things that must’ve been racing through his head. Things like April 18, 1942, when he and fifteen other pilots had lifted the spirits of an almost defeated nation by flying this selfsame aircraft off of the heaving deck of the USS Hornet, or being spotted by a Japanese fishing vessel that forced them to accomplish this daredevil feat 170 miles early, about fuel exhaustion and stormy nighttime conditions with zero visibility.

  Lucian had continued to fly as a civilian, working part time on short contracts around the region, off and on over the years after World War II. After losing his leg he was able to regain his medical certificate through something he called a waiver, which simply required him to use an artificial limb. He’d take vacations to go fly and every so often he’d call me in to cover so he could just take off, but I had no idea how long it had been since he’d flown an aircraft like Steamboat.

  I became aware of his lips moving. “Old airplanes never die; they just get handed over to the Air Transport Group, fly a while, go
to surplus, and then get sold to those aerial firefighters in Greybull.” He held his mug out, and I unscrewed the top of the thermos and refilled it for him as he took a step forward, his dark eye like a black widow suspended in the web of wrinkles at the corner of the socket—just as dark and just as deadly. His matinee profile was still sharp and chiseled as he raised the mug, the steam filming his glasses like high-altitude cloud cover.

  He held the mug there, stopping just short of his lips as he read the scripted letters on the side of the craft. “Well, hello Steamboat . . .”

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Julie held a gallon jug of water, or what I assumed was water, rattling with ice, and tossed her flight bag and a backpack up into the nose of Steamboat. Throwing a thumb over her shoulder to where Lucian was fiddling with one of the combination locks on a locker in the hallway, Julie smiled. “He’s only got one leg, so you’re going to need a copilot.”

  “I thought you weren’t certified for this thing.”

  Stuffing her ash-blond hair up under her cap and donning a pair of black horn-rims, she set the plastic container on the ladder and zipped up the front of her overalls. “Not as a captain, but last summer I got some flight time in as a copilot, and I have both my legs, so I’m all you’ve got.”

  I was surrounded by crazy people. “As I recall, they’re nice legs.”

  “Flatterer.” She glanced over my shoulder to look back at the old Doolittle Raider and put on a padded jacket; she pulled out a pack of Beemans chewing gum and offered me a stick. “Just do me a favor?”

  I declined the gum. “What’s that?”

  She unwrapped it, popped it in her mouth, and smiled a dazzling grin. “Get him to stop calling me Toots.”

  I listened as the wind buckled and popped against the steel siding of the hangar. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Look who’s talking.” She grabbed a notebook. “Walt, I at least know what kinds of conditions we’re up against, and I don’t get flight sick like some people I know. I think you’re the one who needs to not do this.” She studied me. “Have you called Martha?”