The Spirit of Steamboat Read online

  “Yep. Wait, what’s the iron compass?”

  Lucian growled. “Railroad tracks.”

  “And scud is ground fog.” Julie took another swig from her jug and swallowed loudly. “At night you would need landing lights to see the road, but B-25s didn’t come equipped.”

  The Raider smiled and reached underneath the main panel to flip what appeared to be a hidden switch. “Yeah, well, Angel, this one does.”

  Both Julie and I looked out the windows and could see nothing but a solid white snowscape of flakes shooting past, undulating and illuminated by the lights that glowed from each wing, thrilling but disorienting enough to cause my stomach to try and crawl up my throat.

  “But you never turn on landing lights at night in a heavy snowstorm or scud if you want to see anything—everyone knows that, too, right, Toots?”

  The blonde, ignoring the sarcasm, looked at Lucian. “How did you know about those?”

  Turning off the lights, he settled back in his seat and adjusted the left throttle. “What, you think this is the first time Steamboat and I ever danced the hurricane deck?”

  “Not now, I don’t.”

  He peered at the stopwatch and rose up a little as if to look over the nose of the craft into the blackness. “Powder Junction; we’re making good time.”

  He sat back down and glanced at his copilot. “You got ’er, Toots?”

  She made a face and then nodded as he turned back to look at me. “You ever hear of Operation Haylift?”

  I nodded. “Rings a bell.”

  “Before your time, really.” He shot a look at Julie again. “Both of you.” He noticed something on the dash and absently reached up to tap one of the instruments. “Back in ’49 we had one of the worst winters we’d ever had since 1889, which, I would like to add, was before my time. The one in ’49 was dubbed the Winter of the Great White Ruin; millions of sheep and cattle were stranded in snowdrifts without feed, sometimes caught with herders with their horses and mules, entire ranches snowed in. Well, I got a call from Greybull and he wants to know if I can take off and land a B-25 in short distance, and I tell him, hell, if you’ve got an aircraft carrier I can take her off that.” He adjusted his hat and flipped up the collar on his leather jacket, the cold evidently getting to him, too. “Mostly they used C82s, called ’em Flying Boxcars for Operation Haylift, but we used anything that was around . . . We dropped 525 tons of alfalfa in the first week, fed a million sheep and a hundred thousand head of cattle, not to mention all the sheepherders and ranchers we saved.” He smiled. “Wasn’t all roses, though. We had one ol’ fella—we dropped the first big, heavy bale and it took out his front porch; then we dropped another on his corral and collapsed half of it; then we finished the job by dropping one on his wash house, which had his wife’s brand-new wringer-washer in it. He got on his horse and was able to get to a neighbor’s place, which had a phone, and called us up: Please don’t drop any more hay on my place, or my wife’s gonna divorce me . . .” Lucian reached out and patted the throttles of the big plane. “The reason I’m telling you this story—this was the plane I flew back in ’49.”

  He glanced around the cockpit. “You’d be amazed how connected to these things you can get.” He tipped his silver belly hat back and indicated to Julie that he could take the yoke now and fly the aircraft as he turned forward but talked over his shoulder at me. “Does the doc know how to use these headphones?”

  I thought about how silent it had been from the rear of the Mitchell. “He mentioned them when I was talking to him before we took off. You think they’re busted or he doesn’t know how to turn them on?”

  He shrugged. “It’s quiet.”

  I nodded and finished the hackneyed cinematic statement for him, “. . . it’s too quiet.”

  Shifting in the seat and peering through the dim glow of instrumentation in the rear of the cockpit, I spotted the crawlspace above the bomb bay. “Through there?”

  “Yes—unless you wanna climb out the window here and crawl around.”

  I glanced at Julie. “She’s small; how come she can’t do it?”

  “’Cause I’m gonna need her help to determine the maximum range that can be squeezed out of every drop of gasoline by setting the correct throttle, prop pitch, and mixing controls—and by the way, she’s helping me fly the damn plane.” He pulled back and then pushed forward, and I could feel my stomach once again attempting to leave my body through my mouth. I grabbed the seat underneath me. “I knew that ridge was around here somewhere.” After making sure Julie had the con again, he pulled out a small notepad along with a stubby golf pencil that had also been hiding in his pocket. “First thing I ever taught you was that a short pencil’s better than a long memory, Troop.” He licked the point and shot me another look. “What, you wanna crash?”

  “No, I thought I was pretty clear about that.” A thought became even clearer as I freed myself from my abbreviated bench seat and leaned forward. “Hey, we’ve got enough fuel to make it to Denver, right?” He busied himself, running the numbers on the pad and looking at his wristwatch and the vintage stopwatch—the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and we were down to this.

  He tapped the gauge again. “Well, one of three things . . .”

  I stopped moving. “Oh, why do I not like the sound of that?”

  “Either that knucklehead Rick shorted us on fuel, our indicators are off . . .” He stared at the gauges, giving all of them a tap for history’s sake or maybe that’s what pilots did, tap gauges. “Or . . .”

  “Or what?”

  “We’ve got ourselves a leak.”

  “How bad?” I took a strange comfort in the tone of Julie’s voice, sounding as concerned as mine.

  “She’ll hold 974 gallons, but that ain’t what we’ve got.”

  My turn to swallow. “How much do we have?”

  “About a quarter of that.” The old Raider scrubbed the stubble on his face with a knotty hand and then leaned back in his seat with his lips moving as they had when he’d been counting the yards when it seemed we were hell-bent on crashing into the terminal building. His hand dropped, and he made a few more calculations; then he nodded, speaking mostly to himself but perhaps a little to Steamboat. “At this rate, we’ll make it, though—just.”

  Stooping in the cockpit, I stepped around my seat—these things weren’t made for anybody six foot five. “I can’t tell you how reassured I am.” They ignored me as I hung my headset on the back of my seat. Lucian began going over the figures with Julie and making adjustments to the intimidating number of switches, knobs, and levers on the ancient plane. “If either of you gets bored, feel free to take a turn on the lever there.”

  There was a small space at the rear of the cockpit that looked as if it was for the radio and possibly the bombardier, but what did I know? The plane rocked and dropped as I grabbed the rails in a weightless state, looking back to see the two pilots attempting to right the aircraft; evidently, the real teeth of the storm were catching up with us.

  I placed a foot on the small ladder, which was bolted to the rear bulkhead that led to the dark crawlspace above the bomb bay. I took a few steps up and forced my bulk into the aluminum sheathing, aware that the empty space and a few doors that had their own ideas about staying closed were the only thing between me and a doozy of a couple thousand foot drop. There were handles on the side to assist, so I pulled myself along, feeling like I was working in a coal mine.

  There was light at the other end of the crawlspace, and I have to admit that I was relieved to get to the other side; I raised my head to look into the dimly lit amidships and the rear of the B-25.

  The gurney was still attached the way it had been, the IVs, oxygen tanks, battery packs, and assorted medical equipment not having moved, but the other two passengers were not in their seats. The child’s grandmother was on the floor beside the covered, ventilated gurney, but I couldn’t see Isaac anywhere.

  Mrs. Oda looked up, very happy to
see me, and yelled above the constant drone of the engines, “Yokatta!”

  I maneuvered a turnaround and clambered down the ladder with all the grace of a wounded buffalo; I still couldn’t locate the doc. Steamboat bucked again, and I grabbed hold of the inside fuselage to steady myself before venturing farther, sure that if I didn’t, I would likely land on someone.

  Feeling a knot in my stomach, I kneeled by the woman, pulled back the blankets beside her, and discovered Isaac, out cold, with a good-sized goose egg on his forehead. “The plane knocked him out?”

  “Hai.” I noticed the fine quality of her features and the absolute white of her hair; if I’d been casting a Japanese empress, I don’t think I could’ve found anyone that looked more the role than Mrs. Oda.

  “How long has he been unconscious? Did it happen when we took off?”

  She nodded twice, but I was pretty sure she didn’t understand a word I was saying.

  I figured Isaac must’ve fallen on takeoff before he could get in his seat and get his harness on. I checked his pulse, which appeared to be fine, and then gave him a few gentle smacks on the face. “Doc, hey, Doc!”

  His eyelids compressed and then opened, his eyes focused through the thick lenses of his glasses, and he turned to me. “Walter?”

  “None other.”

  Listening to the engines, he raised his voice. “Where are we?”

  “Considering the alternative, the good news is—still aloft.”

  A bit confused but rapidly gathering his wits, he looked up at the woman. “Oh my God, how is the girl?”

  I peeled the blankets away, save one, figuring he was going to need it, and helped him to his feet as he massaged the side of his head. “You’re going to have to tell us.”

  I moved Mrs. Oda onto her seat and buckled her in, but just as I turned, the plane veered again, this time banking, sending Isaac and me into the side of the fuselage and one of the Plexiglas windows; we both looked out into the darkness and then slid onto the steel grating of the floor. Luckily, the doc landed on top of me, and we lay there for a moment before Steamboat settled back into a level position.

  Isaac looked around. “Has the entire flight been like this?”

  Half picking him up, I sat him against the bulkhead. “It hasn’t been that bad until now. We’re headed due south, but the storm front is coming in southeast, so we’re just on the edge, but I think it’s catching up.”

  Isaac struggled to a standing position, holding on to the ladder. “Can’t we go any faster?”

  “No. We’re stuck, and whatever happens, we’ve just got to ride it out.”

  He nodded and approached the gurney to check the IVs and battery pack on the ventilator attached to the girl. He disconnected one of the bottles and hooked up another, all the time trying to explain over the constant drone of the radial engines. “The fluids must run the whole time; this is the most important part of burn resuscitation.”

  Steamboat rocked again but not quite so violently, and the doc pulled his stethoscope from under his coveralls and jacket, fumbling the stems into his ears, sneaking his hand under the plastic tent, and placing it over Amaterasu’s heart. I studied his face and then watched as he moved the device on her chest.

  He glanced at me with a hard look. “I’m going to need your help.” His tone froze me for a second, and I watched as he fished a blood pressure cuff from one of his medical supply bags attached to the gurney. He spoke through the side of his mouth directly into my ear as he glanced at the tense older woman harnessed into her seat. “I can’t hear her heart.”

  My eyes bugged. “What?”

  He shook his head and gestured toward the interior of the cabin. “With all the racket, I can’t hear her heart—at least, I hope it’s because of all the engine noise.”

  “What can I do?”

  He unrolled the cuff and began attaching it to the child’s limp arm. “Hang on to me and don’t let me fly all over the inside of this damnable contraption while I’m working, for a start.”

  I reached over and gripped the inside brace of the fuselage and then grabbed a fistful of Isaac’s baggy coveralls at the small of his back. I watched as he uncovered Amaterasu—Mrs. Oda inched a little forward in her seat so that she could also see.

  Only half the girl’s face was visible under the bandages, but even with the swelling and the soot burns around her nostrils where the plastic tubing entered her body, you could see the resemblance to her grandmother. Very pale, she was maybe ten or eleven, very close to Cady’s age.

  “The residual burns on her face were caused by the hot steam that burns the mucosa . . .” The doc’s hands were deft and professional as he pumped up the cuff and deflated it slowly while holding on to the girl’s wrist to check the radial artery. He repeated the procedure. I’d seen the doc do this type of thing enough times to know that the pulse would disappear under the inflation of the cuff but was supposed to reappear when deflated, revealing the systolic blood pressure; I was not reassured as he repeated it yet again.

  “Doc?”

  He removed the cuff and tossed it to the side. “Gott . . . Her blood pressure is dangerously low.” Pulling the plastic curtain aside, I watched helplessly as he reached in and felt the girl’s neck, even going so far as to feel around on her throat. “Swelling at the jugular because the superior vena cava is being pinched off and unable to drain into the heart, causing tracheal deviation—crackling feeling of the skin at the neck from the air that’s under there.”

  Steamboat shuddered and swayed to the left, and tremors sounded through the fuselage as I held the doc as still as I could. “The pneumo-thing-a-ma-jiggie?”

  His eyes came back to mine, and I could read the trepidation in them. “Yes. The volume of a gas is inversely proportional to the pressure to which it is exposed. So, as barometric pressure falls in the aircraft cabin during the ascent, trapped air in the pneumothorax causes it to expand by approximately thirty-eight percent upon ascent from sea level to the maximum cabin altitude of eight thousand feet.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t noticeable in the helicopter because their cruising altitude was much lower, whereas in our unpressurized cabin the pressure is whatever it happens to be.” He laid a hand on the gurney. “Her problem is worsening.”

  I thought about the conversation the doc and I had had when we’d boarded the plane. “What about the syringe needle deal?”

  “Evidently the wound is too great; we’ll never be able to withdraw that much air on a continual basis.”

  I sighed. “You know what I’d like, Doc?”

  “A Pleurovac?”

  “Well, besides that. I just want one break—just one thing that goes right on this flight.” I processed what he had just said and yanked my face around to look at him. “What kind of vac?”

  “A Pleurovac.”

  I shook my head. “Please tell me we have one.”

  “We do not.”

  I couldn’t help but make a growling noise. “How long does she have?”

  “I don’t know, but the airspace in her chest cavity is growing and has collapsed the lung; it’s now crowding her heart, Walter, to the point that it will no longer be able to pump the blood needed to keep her alive.”

  I set my jaw. “Well, we’re going to have to get all western on this, aren’t we?”

  “What does that mean?”

  I glanced around, looking for something that might resemble a Pleurovac, undeterred by the fact that I had no idea what one looked like. “We’ve got to rig something up.”

  He stared at me with his mouth agape, horrified. “Rig something up? Walter . . .”

  “She’s going to die, Doc.”

  His voice was sharp as the bomber kicked to the side again. “Ich berucksichtige den!”

  “English, Doc.” My eyes rested on a small apparatus attached to the gurney, and I nodded toward it. “What’s that?”

  He shook his head, dismissing the thought. “Nasogastric pump; it’s connected to the hose that
is running through her nose and down her esophagus. It decompresses her stomach and keeps her from vomiting and aspirating while she is on the ventilator.”

  “Can we take her off that and use the pump?”

  “And if she aspirates?”

  “Doc, you said her heart isn’t going to be able to take the pressure, so she’s dead if we don’t do something . . . Maybe she’ll throw up or maybe she won’t.” I looked down at the small body. “She’s got a strong stomach—I mean she’s hung in there so far.”

  I watched as one of the most intelligent men I knew coaxed his intellect out onto the thin ice of speculation, a place where I worked and lived. “I can use the tubing from the nasogastric pump and I have medical tape . . . But I need a container, something with a lid—with liquid in it.”

  “What kind of liquid?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  I stood there for a second, feeling every mile an hour we were traveling—and then glanced toward the front of the plane. “I’ll be right back.”

  “What?” The doc’s voice called after me as I shimmied onto the roof of the bomb bay and crawled toward the cockpit.

  In the rush to get there and because of another bout of turbulence, I bounced off the radio section and fell to the floor near my seat as both Lucian and Julie looked down at me, the Raider the first to speak. “Where in the Sam Brown have you been?”

  I ignored him and reached a hand up to his copilot. “Julie, I need your water jug.”

  She pulled it out and handed it to me with a confused half-smile. “You thirsty or nervous?” She studied my face. “Or both.”

  I watched as the doc carefully removed the plastic tubing from Amaterasu’s nose, produced a scalpel from his medical kit, and cut the length of clear plastic in half so that he had two tubes. He hitched one end of one tube to the small turquoise pump that he had previously turned off and handed me the other end as we knelt on the walkway. “Hold this and keep it clean.”